


Assassination Attempt

by GemmaRose



Series: SG Royalty AU [1]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers: Shattered Glass
Genre: (It's a nameless OC who's only in half a scene but I'm tagging to be safe), Affection, Alien Culture, Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe - Bodyguard, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Arson, Assassination Attempt(s), Assassination Plot(s), Character Death, Child Murder, Childhood Trauma, Cleaning, Coitus Interruptus, Confessions, Crushes, Crying, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dancing, Developing Friendships, Discipline, Drunken Flirting, Drunkenness, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Festivals, Friendship, Getting to Know Each Other, Happy Ending, Heart-to-Heart, Hospitalization, Kissing, Lies, Love Confessions, M/M, Makeup, Mental Health Issues, Mentions of Mechpreg, Mutual Pining, Nicknames, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Parent-Child Relationship, Party, Past Child Abuse, Pining, Plans, Protectiveness, Realization, Revelations, Shock, Sleepy Cuddles, Sneaking Out, Sparring, Tenderness, The Burning of Nyon, Trauma, Truth, Violence, Vulnerability, Worry, accidental murder, background Megatron/Starscream - Freeform, maybe should've added that sooner, past Megatron/Optronix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-08-10 22:10:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 32,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20142787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GemmaRose/pseuds/GemmaRose
Summary: Rodimushatesthe Princes of Kaon, hates them and everything they stand for with a passion that burns as bright as the flames which live under his plating. So when Optronix orders him and Yellowjacket to go play at being “Personal Guards” for the royal deceptibrats, he jumps at the chance to be close enough to kill the mechs. Of course, it’s a lot easier to hate a mech you’ve never met than it is to hate someone who you have to spend every single mega-cycle with.





	1. Chapter 1

As the second-forged prince, Deadlock wasn’t privy to quite as much confidential information as his older brother. Overlord usually told him stuff anyways, he would be his brother’s counsel when their creators’ rule came to an end so he had to know all sorts of things, but some things still came as a surprise. Like, for example, being told that someone had put a price on his helm. “Is it at least a good price?” he asked as soon as the news left his sire’s mouth, and immediately winced. Next to him, Overlord facepalmed.

“The contract promises quite a _significant_ amount of money.” Sire said, sounding very much like he would be angry if he weren’t so tired. Deadlock stretched his field out to brush against his creator’s with a pulse of apology.

“And it’s a genuine threat, I presume?” Overlord asked, shifting slightly and ‘accidentally’ knocking his elbow against Deadlock’s pauldron.

“As near as we can tell, yes.” Sire’s head dipped forward, one hand coming up to rub at his furrowed brow. “I’ve a mech looking into whoever’s behind the contract, but it could take stellar cycles, perhaps meta-cycles if the culprit is particularly skilled at hiding themself.”

“So, why do we need to know this?” Deadlock asked, plating crawling at the thought of having somehow upset a member of the nobility enough they’d be willing to pay for his helm removed and spark extinguished.

“Because it is the only reason I was able to convince him to procure personal guards.” Carrier said, leaning against Sire’s shoulder from where he stood behind their larger creator. “For both of you.”

“We can protect ourselves!” Deadlock protested as Sire gestured at a door.

“You’ve never been in a true fight.” Sire said, his voice low and tone leaving no room for argument.

“You’ve had both of us train in combat since we could hold a sword, or a gun in ‘Lock’s case.” Overlord protested, field prickling with indignation. Considering his sheer size, Deadlock wasn’t surprised in the least. He’d never met a mech larger than his older brother, and the idea of Overlord needing a _guard_ was just plain silly.

“Yeah, but has either of you ever been in a real fight?” an unfamiliar voice drawled, and Deadlock’s optics snapped to the pair of mechs who’d just walked into the room. One of them, blue and yellow with a pair of sharp horns on his helm, only came up to the bottom of his chestplate. The other, black with sharp purple decals and a striking facial insignia, would probably be around his height if he stood up straight.

“Doubt it.” the smaller one deadpanned, critical red optics flicking over Deadlock’s frame and then his brother’s.

“Overlord, Deadlock, meet your guards.” Carrier pushed off of Sire’s shoulder and stood up straight, gesturing to the smaller one. “Overlord, this is Yellowjacket. Deadlock, Rodimus.” he waved at the taller of the two guards, then rested a hand on Sire’s arm.

“But he’s _tiny_.” Overlord protested, and Yellowjacket smirked.

“Mech, I could snuff your spark before either of your creators had the chance to stop me.”

“Enough.” Sire growled before Overlord could say something stupid, and Carrier’s hand tightened on his arm. “Overlord, Deadlock, these two mechs are mercenaries, highly recommended by their guild leader.”

“There’s a mercenary guild?” Deadlock asked, feeling rather dumb all of a sudden.

“Two, actually.” Rodimus smirked. Deadlock wondered if that was his resting expression. “The idiot who wants you dead made the mistake of trying to contract our competition.”

“Suffice to say, the two of us are more than qualified to protect your royal afts.” Yellowjacket sketched a sloppy and incredibly informal bow at Overlord. “Any mech, femme, or other who makes an attempt on your life will be **dealt with**.”

“Non-lethally.” Sire said firmly.

“If possible.” Rodimus waved a hand distractedly.

Yellowjacket elbowed Rodimus hard enough to leave a scrape of yellow paint behind, and gave a proper bow to Sire. “We will do our best to bring any would-be assassins to you for judgement, Your Majesty.”

“Sire, I don’t see-”

“Overlord.” Sire’s field flared out, and though it wasn’t directed at him Deadlock caught a glancing flicker of his creator’s irritation. “Until further notice, Yellowjacket is to be your personal guard. Your continued functioning is worth far more to me than your pride. Deadlock, the same goes for you with Rodimus. I will hear no further complaints on this subject.”

Carrier rolled his optics, wings flicking back in irritation. “You both can speak to me later, should you have any complaints.”

“Wait, I thought we were reporting to him.” Rodimus frowned, jerking a thumb at Sire. Yellowjacket facepalmed.

“Oh, you are.” Carrier smirked, trailing his hand up Sire’s arm. “But King Megatron is a very busy mech, so I’ll be taking your reports and concerns for him.”

“Dear.” Sire sighed. Carrier ignored him and slipped his hand across Sire’s back as far as he could manage.

“Any questions?” Carrier asked, looking from Deadlock to his brother to the pair of mercenaries-turned-guards. Nobody spoke. “Good! Now, Deadlock, Overlord, back to your lessons.” Carrier made a shooing motion, and Deadlock rolled his opticis. Overlord tried very hard not to look like he was pouting as he turned and trudged towards the door, but instead of leaving Drift darted forwards to give his carrier a brief, tight hug.

“Love you.”

“Love you too, bitty.” Carrier scratched under the back of his helm, and Deadlock squeezed tighter for a nano-klick before pulling away. Sire gave him a fond smile, and Deadlock bowed briefly before following his brother to the door. Halfway there, Rodimus fell in step just a pace shy of walking properly beside him. Deadlock examined his new guard out of the corner of his optic, taking in details he'd not bothered with earlier. The scuffs in his paint under fresh matte polish, the subtle glimmer of dimmed biolights cutting across his abdomen, the strange scent that seemed to cling to him which Deadlock could only liken to the hottest days of summer.

“Is Rodimus your only name?” he asked as they started following Overlord and Yellowjacket down the hall. Rodimus gave him an odd look, field unfurling to broadcast his bafflement. “Just, everyone I’ve ever met introduces themself with where they’re from, or what House they’re part of.”

“Well, not all of us have a House we belong to.” Rodimus snorted, field furling close again.

“Then a city you’re from, or a neighbourhood?” Deadlock asked, turning to walk sideways so he could keep both optics on his new guard.

Rodimus’s mouth twisted briefly in a mockery of a smile. “In that case, you can call me Rodimus of the Ashes.”

Deadlock’s optics widened, but before he could figure out how to respond to that his shoulder knocked into Overlord’s back and he stumbled. Rodimus’s hand flashed out to catch him by the collar faring before he could fall on his aft, and Deadlock smiled as he flashed his field with gratitude. Rodimus rolled his optics, pulled him back onto his pedes, and released his collar faring to step away.

“You Highnesses.” their tutor said as the door opened, and Deadlock reluctantly pulled his optics from Rodimus, attempting to pull up which subject they were supposed to be learning right now. History? It was either history or politics, neither of which he was particularly interested in. Unfortunately, as future counsel of the King he would need to be well-versed in both.

Throughout the lesson though, no matter how hard he tried to pay attention, his processor kept drifting back to Rodimus. He could _feel_ the mech’s crimson gaze resting on his plating like a physical weight, hot and borderline uncomfortable. Resisting the urge to turn and meet that gaze was downright impossible, and every time his optics met Rodimus’s a current ran through his frame. A current of _what_, he wasn’t quite sure, but whatever it was it made his plating prickle.

The mega-cycle dragged on, excruciatingly slow even compared to a normal day of tutoring. Every klik, Deadlock was hyper-aware of the extra frames in the room with himself and his brother, their unfamiliar presence rendered unsettling by the near-complete lack of EM field they projected. Strange and slightly creepy though they were, he couldn’t help but be intrigued. What sort of mech introduced himself as being of the ashes? At a guess he’d say Rodimus wasn’t more than a few thousand years his senior, if that, and there’d not been any major fires in Kaon or her protectorates since long before then.

It wasn’t until Hadeen sank below the horizon that a rather important question occurred to Deadlock. He stilled, hand hovering over the operation panel of his chamber door, and looked over his shoulder at Rodimus leaning casually on the wall opposite. “Where will you be recharging?” he asked, and Rodimus tilted his helm slightly.

“What?”

“Surely you were given a habsuite to recharge in.”

Rodimus rolled his optics, field going flat and condescending. “I've been hired to guard your shiny aft.” he said, slowly and clearly with the most simple glyphs possible. “So when your guard is down, mine has to be up. It's _literally my job_.”

“But you need to recharge sometime!” Deadlock cried. He'd had to go without recharge for a decacycle once, as part of his training, and by the end he'd barely been lucid let alone ready to fight.

“Well tonight I’ll be standing guard out here, as ordered.” Rodimus drawled

“Ordered?” Deadlock frowned. “By whom?”

“Your carrier, obviously.” Rodimus scoffed. “He’s an overprotective one, isn’t he.”

“He does worry a lot.” Deadlock nodded. “But in this case, I think he's being very reasonable.” he glanced down the hall at his brother's door, where Yellowjacket stood like a red-opticked statue against the wall. “Overlord would disagree, though.”

Rodimus didn't respond, but Deadlock swore he felt a flicker of amusement from the mercenary's close-furled field. “So, if you're not going to recharge now, when will you?” he asked, and what little he could sense of Rodimus’s field went flat and cold.

“With all due respect, Your Highness, that's none of your concern.” Rodimus's voice was cold, his glyphs clipped and sub-glyphs borderline disrespectful.

“Oh.” Deadlock cycled his audials as he parsed the words, and hoped the smile he gave was more convincing than his field. “Then uh, goodnight?” he hedged, unsure what the proper parting words were for this situation. Rodimus inclined his helm, so at least he wasn't offended, and Deadlock slipped into his chambers. The door locked behind him automatically, but it didn't feel quite so secure anymore now that his creators had decided to assign him a personal guard to stand outside for his protection.

Recharge did not come easily, that night.


	2. Chapter 2

Some might've called mods that allowed a mech to scan another mech's vitals through up to three reinforced walls ‘invasive' or ‘immoral’. Rodimus called them practical. Especially now, when he had to play at being a personal guard for some thin-plated noble deceptibrat. Only once Deadlock's readings dropped into the low, steady pattern of a speedster in recharge did he move from his post outside the prince's door. Yellowjacket met his optics, and the encrypted line between them opened at a thought.

::Do we _really_ have to play along with this?:: he sent as soon as Yellowjacket’s side of the link initialized, and even all the way down the hall he swore he could feel the ripple of exasperation in Yellowjacket's field. Well, that was what he got for accepting this mission alongside the only Autobot willing to actually talk to him outside of professional requirements.

::Until Optronix says otherwise, this is our mission.:: Yellowjacket replied. ::I’m no happier about it than you.::

::I still think one of us should call in a favour or two, stage something to earn their trust quicker.:: Rodimus leaned back against the wall next to Deadlock’s door, optics on his heavily modded HUD. ::The sooner we can tell Optronix they trust us, the sooner he can send us our _real_ mission.:: Rodimus smiled, fingers flexing restlessly as the fire in his lines flared hot for a nano-klik. Sure, Yellowjacket’s impossible-to-prove kill count was impressive on a technical level, but if he could add even just one wing of the royal palace to his list of arson sites his rep would get one _pit_ of a boost.

::Were you even paying attention during the briefing?:: Yellowjacket commed back quickly, sub-glyphs sharp with irritation.

::Hey, a mech can dream.:: Rodimus huffed, crossing his arms and shooting a glare at Yellowjacket, who stuck out his glossa in response. Much as he’d love to comm Optronix, the risk of it being intercepted was far too great. Blaster could disguise Optronix’s messages to them, but they had no way of disguising their own messages well enough to send past King Megatron’s own communications expert and spymaster.

::Speaking of dreaming.:: Yellowjacket sent a data packet labelled Overlord Schedule. ::We need to set up times to recharge.::

Rodimus slapped his own information on Deadlock’s regular schedule together in a data packet and sent it off to Yellowjacket, tho tilted his helm slightly as he unpacked it. ::With the amount of tutoring they share, we should be able to trade off without much difficulty.:: he commented after a klik of studying the two schedules side by side. ::And hey, maybe you can show Lordy up tomorrow.:: he pinged Yellowjacket a timestamp, when the princes would be getting tutored in combat.

::Lordy?:: Yellowjacket commed him back, and Rodimus shrugged.

::Like frag am I dignifying them with their actual names when I don’t have to for sake of my cover.::

::Fair enough.:: Yellowjacket nodded in Rodimus’s peripheral vision. ::I doubt I’d be allowed to actually fight one of the princes, though.::

::You can always fight me.:: Rodimus grinned, glancing over at Yellowjacket. ::I’ll even throw the fight for you, for a price.::

::Like I need you to throw the fight to beat you.:: Yellowjacket scoffed quietly, the sound carrying through the silent hall.

::I can kick your tin-plated aft and you know it.:: Rodimus taunted. Yellowjacket flipped him off. ::Sorry, _melt_ your tin-plated aft.::

::Last time we sparred I’m the one who kicked _your_ aft.:: Yellowjacket crossed his arms, grinding his pauldrons into the wall behind him.

::Yeah, and we’ve been trading off since we were ten vorns old.:: Rodimus flicked a knife out of his subspace and tilted it to catch the light, inspecting its edge. ::I promise I can make it look convincing.::

::Why do you think I even want to fight Lordy?:: Yellowjacket asked, using the sarcastic subglyphs Rodimus had attached to the crown prince’s nickname.

::Because he’s everything you hate.:: Rodimus grinned, tucking his knife back in his subspace. ::Thin-plated, coddled, goody-two-pedes meh who’s never known a day of hardship in his whole functioning. _And_ he thinks you’re weak because you’re small.::

The low growl of Yellowjacket’s engine rumbled through the still air of the hall, and Rodimus bent his helm forward as he stifled laughter. ::I’m right and you know it.::

::I hate you. So much.::

::Two favours and I’ll throw the fight~:: he grinned wide and smug.

::One.::

::Only if you make it a fun one.:: Rodimus conceded.

::I can do that.:: Yellowjacket agreed.

::Oh, hey, how about we go at each other like we’ll go at our marks once we get our new orders?:: he suggested, and Yellowjacket actually turned his helm to glare at him.

::We stick to our _current_ orders until further notice.::

::Yeah, yeah.:: Rodimus rolled his optics. ::But it can’t hurt to practice, can it?::

Yellowjacket didn’t respond, but Rodimus didn’t let that slow him down. Yellowjacket always got weirdly quiet after Rodimus made a point he didn’t want to admit was right. ::Now if only I could set some practice fires. I’ve already seen like, five places that’d probably go up like triple filtered engex.::

::Rodimus, no.:: Yellowjacket’s subglyphs fell flat and weary, and Rodimus grinned as he chuckled softly. Autobots didn’t do _friends_, but the balance he and Yellowjacket had was pretty damn close.

::Rodimus yes.:: he fired back, and sniggered when Yellowjacket shut down their comm link. Other Autobots their age were pathetic weaklings barely worth the processor space it took to remember their designations and appearances, and those on their skill level had been Autobots at least half again as long as either of them had been functioning, but at least in each other they had an equal.

The night passed fairly quickly, peaceful and calm even with the regular patrols of palace guards both through the halls and around the perimeter, and when Deadlock emerged from his chambers freshly washed and polished Rodimus raised an optic ridge. “Some fancy event today?” he asked, and when Deadlock gave him a confused look he barely refrained from rolling his optics. What a stupid deceptibrat. “Your polish.” he gestured at the almost offensively shiny topcoat on Deadlock’s thin, impractical armour.

“Oh, right, you only saw me late yestermeg.” Deadlock smiled, easy and open like the fool he was. “This is my normal polish, it just dulls throughout the mega-cycle and gets scuffed up during training.”

Normal polish. As in, he applied a new coat _every morning_? Rodimus could barely wrap his processor around the idea. If he tried to do that, he’d probably end up halving the not-inconsiderable amount of money he put towards safehabs boltholes and emergency supplies _put together_ every stellar cycle, not to mention the amount of time that must take, not just putting the new polish on but stripping off the old.

“So, are you going to be sticking around my classes again today?” Deadlock asked, and Rodimus gave him a skeptical look.

“I’m your personal guard.” he said slowly, keeping his subglyphs as simple as possible. “Where you go, I go.”

“Oh.” Deadlock looked away, and Rodimus could practically _see_ his processor spinning. What a primus-damned _dumbaft_. Rodimus was mech enough to admit Deadlock was moderately attractive, even with his garish Autobot-red paint job and stupid bright blue optics. His frame was well sculpted, his kibble nicely arranged, and his face traditionally handsome. Fortunately, he seemed about as bright as a cube of lowgrade. Getting attracted to a mark was just plain stupid, not that it’d stopped him before.

The lessons he’d stood guard through yestermeg had been boring, the instructors droning on and on about irrelevant slag no sane mech would ever need to know, but somehow the ones today were _even worse_. Possibly due to the subjects, possibly due to the fact that all of these were shared with Overlord. It certainly didn’t help that Yellowjacket had won the game of wheel axle tarmac they used to decide which of them got to recharge first, so he was in dire need of a processor defrag for the first two lessons.

At the very least, he could amuse himself by imagining different painful ways to end the tutors as they droned on. His favourite so far was the classic pedes-up melting, the screams usually got annoying too fast to make doing it properly worthwhile but with this particular tutor he thought he’d rather enjoy hearing them in pain. Deadlock kept ‘sneaking’ looks at him too, which didn’t help his mood. He could hardly wait for the night Optronix gave them their _actual_ job. He’d disable Deadlock’s vocaliser first of course, and then... 

A popup on his HUD alerted Rodimus to optics focused on him, and a quick scan of the room found Deadlock looking at him with a stupid smile on his ridiculously expressive face. Why was he smiling? Rodimus frowned, and if not for the optics on him would’ve smacked himself. His expressionless mask had slipped, and Deadlock probably thought he’d been smiling for some other reason. Some very wrong reason, undoubtedly, he’d bet most of the shanix to his name that the stupid pampered deceptibrat couldn’t even conceive of half the things he’d been idly planning.

He _really_ hoped Optronix sent them their actual orders soon.


	3. Chapter 3

Deadlock had trained in the art of combat since he was old enough to know which end of a weapon went in his hand and which end went in the target. He picked up new styles almost as fast as his brother advanced through the levels of his own chosen form of hand to hand, knew how to handle nearly all the weapons in the royal armoury, was unparalleled in small-arms marksmanship... and he had never seen anything like the fight currently happening between his and Overlord’s new guards. Rodimus and Yellowjacket had barely made half a circle around each other before launching into a flurry of motion, each wielding their single small tag-blade with incredible precision.

Rodimus flowed like oil, bending in ways Deadlock hadn’t known mechs could bend to dodge Yellowjacket’s strikes. Yellowjacket’s movements were less fluid, but he was just as light on his pedes as he danced around Rodimus’s attacks. At least, Deadlock _assumed_ their flurry of motion was the two of them attacking and dodging each other. They were moving too fast for him to properly track, and the way they fought was so unlike anything he knew there was nothing in their movements he could use to predict the potential following actions. Without a style the fight should’ve looked chaotic, a mess of flailing limbs without forms and patterns to guide them, but somehow the mercenaries managed to make it look graceful.

For two kliks there was only the sound of pedes on the mat-padded floor as Rodimus and Yellowjacket lashed out, dodged, and sought openings to press the attack. The first scrape of plating against plating came accompanied by a huff of laughter from Rodimus, and if the fight had been fast before now it was _blindingly_ so. How were they functioning so well on such minimal recharge? From the glances he’d kept sneaking during the morning’s lessons, each of them was running on _maybe_ two cycles of rest, barely enough for a single defrag cycle. And yet they moved with such surety, such absolute confidence, that each scrape of plating against plating was accompanied by a self-satisfied flare of one of their fields.

“That all you got?” Rodimus teased, and before Deadlock knew it his guard was flat on the floor, a stripe of pigment from the tag-blade scored across the bridge of his nose and under the lower edge of his optics. Yellowjacket was on him in under a nano-klik, pinning Rodimus’s upper arms under his knees and his throat in one blue hand. The other hand hovered over Rodimus’s face, blade down as if to stab through an optic and take out his processor. Rodimus bared his denta in a silent snarl, and Deadlock shivered as he realized Yellowjacket’s grip had force-muted his guard’s vocaliser.

“Yield.” Yellowjacket commanded. Rodimus flipped him off, and Yellowjacket brought the tag-blade down to scrape over his cheek with an easy flick of his wrist. “I could do this all mega-cycle.”

Rodimus stuck his glossa out, made a disgusted face when Yellowjacket caught it with the flat of the tag-blade, and tapped the mat three times with one of his hands. Yellowjacket smirked, spun the tag-blade in his hand, and swirled it over Rodimus’s cheek before rising to his pedes. “Aft.” Rodimus spat as he propped himself up in a sitting position, rubbing at the faint blue transfers on his throat cables. “That pigment tastes disgusting.”

“Sounds like a you problem.” Yellowjacket fired back, taking the second tag-blade from where Rodimus had dropped it and walking both over to where Deadlock and Overlord stood. “Was that a satisfactory demonstration of my skill, Your Highness?” he asked as he held the training weapons out to Overlord handle-first. Deadlock elbowed his brother in the side after a few nano-kliks, and he took the tag-blades back.

“That was- more than satisfactory.” Overlord reset his vocaliser and Deadllock barely kept the grin off his face. Was his indomitable big brother _embarrassed_? It wasn’t every day someone proved him wrong that thoroughly. “Thank you.”

Rodimus grumbled something so softly Deadlock only caught the dark tone of it, and when his optics found Rodimus’s face he couldn’t help but snigger. His guard’s glossa and upper denta were vibrant purple, and thin lines on his cheek sketched out a crude spike and valve in the same shade, evidently Yellowjacket’s handiwork. “Rodimus, there’s a washrack just down the hall.” he said, trying not to grin as he indicated the direction with a thumb over his shoulder. “Solvent should help get the taste out.”

“But Your Highness, I-”

“Deadlock and I will be armed, and Yellowjacket will be present.” Overlord said, his tone even but field prickling with suppressed amusement where it brushed Deadlock’s. “You are dismissed until you’ve cleaned up.”

For a few nano-kliks Rodimus looked ready to argue, then he slumped slightly with a sigh. “As Your Highness commands.” he gave a small bow, and Deadlock couldn’t even catch a flicker of his field as he strode past towards the door, face blank and expressionless once again. Deadlock wondered if he’d been practicing that face as long as he’d been practicing whatever fighting style that had been.

\---

Two short matches later, when Rodimus returned, Deadlock got thwacked on the audial as he turned to wave to his guard. Overlord chuckled, low and teasing, and Deadlock only got hit three more times in the remainder of the sparring session because he looked over at Rodimus at the wrong time. It didn’t stop there, either. Throughout the rest of the mega-cycle, and the next one and the next, Deadlock kept finding his optics and processor both drifting from his lessons and training towards the dark mech standing guard by one of the room’s entrances.

It wasn’t that he was still unused to having a personal guard, or that Rodimus’s presence was obtrusive in any way. In fact he did a phenomenal job of standing where Deadlock had to actively turn his helm to catch a glimpse of him. No, Deadlock just kept finding himself drawn to the mech. Rodimus and Yellowjacket hadn’t sparred again since that first time, so it wasn’t like he had much to go off of, but the more he thought about it the more certain Deadlock became that Rodimus hadn’t actually been fighting at his full strength. Yellowjacket either, he was certain the pair of them had dirty tricks hidden up their under-armour cabling they’d not shown during the sparring match, but he was equally sure neither of them would tell him if they did.

“Soooo.” Overlord drawled as their guards withdrew from the small washrack nearest to the training room, reaching past Deadlock to turn on the solvent. “You’ve been distracted lately.”

Deadlock shrugged, adjusting the heat of the solvent until it was warm enough for his tastes while Overlord moved over to the next stall. “There’s a price on our helms, it’s not exactly something that’s easy to forget.”

“True, true.” Overlord agreed, then hissed as solvent hit his plating either too warm or too cold. For all that he looked an intimidating mountain of a mech, his brother was ridiculously sensitive about so many things. “But that’s not all that’s hogging your processing power, is it?”

“What do you mean?” Deadlock looked at the wall between their stalls with a small frown.

“I mean,” Overlord gripped the top of the wall and rose up to grin down over it. “You’ve got a _crush_.”

“Did I hit you in the helm too hard or something?” Deadlock laughed, and Overlord grinned wider.

“You think I wouldn’t notice you looking back at your guard every five kliks?” he teased, reaching over the wall and grabbing for one of Deadlock’s finials.

“Hey!” he swatted his brother’s hand away, scowling up at him.

“So, when’d you start crushing on him?” Overlord asked, field flaring out and pressing against Deadlock’s with eager anticipation.

“I’m not-” he spluttered, blindly swatting at the controls for the washrack so he’d stop getting pelted in the face with solvent. “That’s disgusting, not to mention _wrong_.” he wrinkled his nose, cringing internally at the very idea of telling their creators that he had feelings for a mercenary. Carrier would sigh and Sire would give him that Look. Overlord didn’t look convinced, though, so he stumbled, words spilling from his vocaliser as fast as they queued up. “I don’t even- why would- I- I’ve never had a crush on anyone, anyways.” he knew his field must be hot with embarrassment, and Overlord’s still-spreading smile only flustered him further. “It’s none of your- you have, the nerve, the audacity- Rodimus is my _guard_, I met him less than a deca-cycle, and he is- he’s absolutely terrible face-wise-”

“Suuuuure.” Overlord’s field flickered almost smugly against his, and Deadlock bristled.

“Hey how- how do I know, frankly, that you're not crushing on your guard? Maybe you are. Maybe you're trying to throw me off, hmm?” he challenged, and the flare of surprise in his brother’s field was all the confirmation he needed. “Check and mate.” he crossed his arms and smirked up at Overlord. “I'm telling Sire.”

“What, that I think my guard is as cute as a voltkitten?” Overlord’s lips curled up in a fond smile. “Anyone with optics would think the same.”

“Ha!” Deadlock crowed, then froze and replayed his brother’s words in his processor. “Wait, you actually- he’s an aft!”

“Yeah but he’s cute.” Overlord laughed and slipped back down into his own stall. “But like, photovolatic cat cute.”

“Yeah, you’re gonna have to explain that.” Deadlock turned his solvent back on and shuttered his optics as it sprayed down over him.

“Did you not see how he fought Rodimus?” Overlord gushed, field flaring with such intense admiration Deadlock could feel it even through the wall between them. “That grace, the _elegance_ of his motions. Not a one wasted!”

“You say that like he didn’t win on pure luck.” Deadlock objected, grabbing a washcloth and rubbing at the streaks of pigment Overlord had left on his plating.

“Luck?!” Overlord squawked in an absolutely undignified manner. One which happened to sound almost exactly like Carrier did when he was upset or startled. “Deadlock were we even watching the same fight?”

“Rodimus was winning right up until Yellowjacket somehow got him pinned. And if they’d been fighting for real I’m sure Rodimus would’ve won.”

“You’re just saying that because you think he’s hot.” Overlord scoffed.

“I don’t think he’s hot.” Deadlock rolled his optics, scrubbing at a slight gap in his plating where Overlord’s tag-blade had caught the inner edge.

“Just yestermeg you called him Ruggedly Handsome.” Overlord pointed out skeptically.

“Well, he is.” Deadlock bristled defensively. “How can you see a mech with a frame like that and not want him? Not to mention those scars, and detailing, and his facial insignia...” he pulled his field in close as it heated with embarrassment. He wasn’t helping his point here. “But that’s beside the point. Thinking a mech is hot isn’t the same as having a crush, and you know it.”

“I know.” Overlord conceded, and Deadlock relaxed somewhat. “I’m just saying you’ve got a bit of a type, y’know?”

Deadlock shouted and pitched his wet rag over the top of the divider to splat on top of his brother’s helm.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was _supposed_ to be part of last chapter, but didn’t quite fit, so now you get two chapters in a row of Deadlock’s PoV! I promise next chapter will be a Roddy one.

“Hey, Overlord?” Deadlock leaned against his brother’s desk, kibble bumping a short stack of datapads and making them sway for a moment.

“Mm?”

“How much do you know about Yellowjacket?”

“He’s my guard, and he’s more than qualified for the position. Why?”

“Just, I was thinking...” Deadlock trailed off and glanced over at the door, which Rodimus and Yellowjacket both stood guard outside of. The walls of the castle were well reinforced, designed in an age of turmoil and war by a mech who must’ve been terminally paranoid, but the door of Overlord’s office was newer, thinner. He lowered the volume of his vocaliser and leaned in close to his brother. “We’ve had these mechs shadowing us for two deca-cycles now, and I only know Rodimus’s full designation because I asked when we first met.”

“And?” Overlord raised an optic ridge, field broadcasting flat disbelief. He matched Deadlock’s volume though, which was something. “He’s your guard, Carrier and Sire picked him out, and he must’ve been vetted by Trannis.”

“It doesn’t seem weird to you?” Deadlock snuck another glance at the door before returning his optics to his brother’s face. “I don’t know what house Rodimus is from, or what city. I don’t know what he thinks about anything, how he takes his energon, his favourite colour-”

“Yellowjacket’s is yellow.” Overlord interjected, and Deadlock gave him a flat look.

“You’re just guessing that based on his name.”

“You say that like anyone actually cares about favourite colour.” Overlord sniffed. Deadlock hopped up onto his brother’s desk and kicked him in the thigh.

“It’s an example.” he flickered annoyance at Overlord, who rolled his optics. Deadlock chose to ignore that and carried on. “We’re stuck with these mechs for the foreseeable future, and they must know that as well as we do.”

“Is there a point you’re getting to?” Overlord flickered annoyance right back at him. “Sire expects me to read through these proposals before our meeting in two cycles.”

“Yeah. We should try making friends with our guards.”

“Why?” Overlord frowned, and Deadlock rolled his optics.

“Because admit it, it’s a _little_ weird having some mech you barely know hanging around you all mega-cycle every mega-cycle.” Deadlock seated himself more securely on the edge of Overlord’s desk and crossed his arms. “But if they’re your friend...”

“You just want me to play along so you can get close to your crush.” Overlord smirked. Deadlock kicked him again, this time with force behind his pede.

“Do not!” he hissed, and Overlord’s field went smug to match his stupid face. “Just, think about it, okay?”

“Go.” Overlord flapped a hand at him in a vague shooing motion. “Go befriend your crush.”

“I don’t have a crush on him!” Deadlock shouted, abandoning any pretense of privacy as he jumped down off the desk, fuel hot under his plating and burning in the exposed derma of his face.

“Deadlock an-”

Deadlock tackled him before he could finish even the first line of that stupid song, and Overlord laughed as he shielded himself.

“I’m taking you _down_ in sparring later.” Deadlock promised when the brief overclocking flash had worn off, and Overlord just laid there sniggering on the floor. “Dork.” Deadlock kicked him in the side, and his brother flipped him off as he sat up.

“If I don’t get these all read I’m telling Sire it’s your fault.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Deadlock waved a hand dismissively and turned to leave. “Have fun reading all that.”

Rodimus gave him a questioning look when he stepped out of the office, and Deadlock shrugged as he shut the door behind himself. “My brother needs reminding, every so often, that he’s not King just yet.”

Rodimus didn’t ask for further clarification, and Deadlock added a note to his little file of Rodimus Facts. He _probably_ had a sibling. That made a grand total of three facts and four educated guesses, for a very loose definition of educated.

\---

Around the northeast corner of the castle, the utilitarian pathways and storage spaces and other assorted buildings gave way to winding paths through plants of every sort, from low metallic groundcover to trees that towered over even Overlord. Crystalline flowers grew in artful clusters between the trees and where the trees did not stand the beautiful plants were marshalled by sculpted bushes and the odd actual sculpture. Sire had told him once that the garden was a relic of his grandcreators, nearly as old as the castle itself, and that only the expense of removing the ancient trees safely kept him from razing it. Deadlock was grateful of that. His family had little interest in the garden, but he rather liked the place. Without setting foot outside the castle he could surround himself with natural beauty, both visual and auditory, and today was no exception. Lilleths sang in the trees overhead, the oil brook whispered over its pebbled taconite bed, a gentle breeze coaxed a peaceful tone from the lattices of crystal climbers just beyond the trees.

It was the perfect place to ask his guard some questions. 

“So, what made you apply for this job?” Deadlock asked Rodimus, who walked a step behind him as he strolled through the garden. He could barely see the mech at the edge of his optical field without turning his helm, couldn’t feel his field at all with how tightly furled the mech kept it, but he swore Rodimus stood a tiny bit straighter at the question. He definitely hesitated a few nano-kliks before answering.

“Your creators value your safety quite highly, Your Highness.” he said, sounding perhaps more sincere than Deadlock had ever heard him. “The payment promised for ensuring it is enough to set me up for a few meta-cycles, at least.”

Ah. Money. “You wouldn’t’ve taken it for any other reason?” he pressed, and this time felt a flicker of Rodimus’s field against his own searching one. Less than a nano-klik of contact, the briefest brush of disbelief with echoes of _disdain_ of all things.

“Mechs in my line of work don’t get to consider other reasons, Your Highness.” he twisted the sub-glyphs of Deadlock’s address much the way Deadlock did his brother’s when he was mocking him, still respectful but only technically.

“You’re part of a Guild though, are you not?” Deadlock frowned. That was one of the Facts he had listed, Sire had told him he contracted a guild for their best and got Rodimus and Yellowjacket.

“What’s it to you?” Rodimus asked, his tone perfectly conversational but his sub-glyphs sharp with suspicion. Had Deadlock struck a sensor, with that question about the guild?

“Nothing.” he stopped and turned to face his guard properly as he held his hands up in the universal symbol of non-threat. “I just want to get to know you better.”

“To what end?” Rodimus’s conversational tone slipped as he began to scowl, suspicion writ large in his bristled plating and narrowed optics.

“Well, I’d like to be friends with you.” Deadlock said, and it was like a switch had been flipped. In a fraction of a nano-klik Rodimus went from cool suspicion to literally blazing rage, the temperature jumping several degrees as his field lashed out with disdain sharp enough it _hurt_.

“Friends?” he sneered, the sub-glyphs lost in the threatening snarl of his engine. “As if I’d ever be _friends_ with a pathetic, stupid, _strutless_ weakling like you.”

Deadlock took a step back, but before he could even open his mouth Rodimus’s face was back to the expressionless mask he wore most of the time. The temperature dropped just as sharply as it had risen, and Deadlock shivered.

“I’m going to patrol ahead, Your Highness.” Rodimus said, his voice flat and sub-glyphs perfectly unremarkable. “Please remain on the path.”

Deadlock nodded, and as soon as Rodimus vanished around the hedge at the next bend in the path he sagged against the nearest tree trunk. “What the entire _frag_ was that?” he gasped to himself, pressing a hand over his fuel pump where it hammered in his chassis. He’d seen Rodimus fight, that time versus Yellowjacket. He knew, logically, that Rodimus must’ve been selected to be his personal guard for a reason. Somehow it hadn’t really computed, in his processor, that this meant Rodimus was fully capable of ending a mech’s life.

It certainly computed now.

He should be terrified, he should be planning to tell his creators that his guard threatened him and then stormed off in a huff, should be should be should be- but he wasn’t. Oh his fuel pump was racing, his plating was clamped tight to his frame, but if Overlord had snapped at him he’d’ve reacted the same way. For some reason, he was absolutely certain Rodimus wouldn’t hurt him. Despite the anger, the disdain, Deadlock’s spark insisted that Rodimus was no more a threat than his own brother. He frowned, pushing himself off the tree and taking a few shaky steps down the path. What was it about Rodimus that had convinced him on such a visceral level the mech could be trusted?

It had to be more than just his looks, Gigatron had been plenty scary when he was mad and Deadlock had broke it off with him over that. No matter how he wracked his processor though, he couldn’t think of anything. But facts were facts, and Rodimus somehow didn’t register as a threat. He was also resistant to the idea of being friends, but Deadlock was sure he could change that. Not the way he’d been thinking of doing, getting Rodimus to simply talk to him, but there were other ways to befriend a mech. None half so simple as just talking to each other, but he’d managed to befriend a visiting diplomat’s daughter once as a bitlet just by spending time with her and they hadn’t even spoken the same language at the time.

Plus, now that he thought about it, befriending Rodimus would probably make him more comfortable talking about stuff, and then he’d answer Deadlock’s questions willingly. Win-win! Now all he had to do was figure out how to befriend a mech who made a good show of hating his very existence. That surely couldn’t be as difficult as it sounded.


	5. Chapter 5

When Rodimus had taken this job, he’d thought it would only be a few deca-cycles at most before Optronix commed Yellowjacket with their _actual_ job. It had been a stellar cycle, and still not so much as a ping from Orion in response to their regular reports disguised as innocuous letters home. In all honesty, Rodimus was surprised Deadlock hadn’t demanded a new guard after he lost his cool a couple deca-cycles back. Either the prince was truly oblivious, truly stupid, or _both_. Rodimus was leaning towards the former more than either of the latter, but he couldn’t rule stupidity out just yet. Not when Deadlock continued trying to engage him in conversation about utterly inane or borderline inappropriate things every time they went out to the gardens.

“So when her sire told me she was gonna get in trouble for breaking it, I grabbed the other and broke it over his helm.” Deadlock chuckled, and Rodimus realized he’d reached the end of his stupid story.

“Sounds like a fun time.” he said blandly, and groaned internally as Deadlock’s eager blue optics turned on him.

“So, what was your mechlinghood like?” he asked, and Rodimus viciously squashed that processor thread before it could even begin retrieving the relevant memory files.

“Oh, you know.” he shrugged, keeping his ventilations very deliberately steady even as his core temperature began to climb, aborting processes as they tried to initialize because there was _no reason_ to crank up his combat protocols right now. “Street scrounger, mini-merc. I made it through alright.” never mind that so many others didn’t, that the path he’d clawed his way along to get where he now stood was less a path and more a mountain of corpses.

“Street scrounger?” Deadlock frowned, and Rodimus shrugged again. Let the pampered deceptibrat think what he would, Primus sure as frag didn’t forge them all equal. “What was it like?” he asked, and Rodimus squinted at the mech for a moment before facing forwards again. What had it been like? He could still feel the soot clinging to his plating, still smell the scorched wiring and melted sentio, still feel the ache in his tanks when he woke up overclocked and running too hot for even his comfort.

“Boring, mostly.” he tweaked his field, projecting disinterest. “Scrounging for scrap aint much to talk about.”

“Scraps of what?” Deadlock asked, and Rodimus had to take a nano-klik to just stare because he couldn’t be _that_ stupid, could he? No, apparently he could.

“Scrap. Junk.” he clarified, letting his disdain for Deadlock’s stupidity saturate his field. “Bits of stuff that got thrown out but can still be sold again.”

“Oh!” Deadlock nodded quickly, as if he understood what Rodimus was saying, which Rodimus was pretty damn sure he didn’t. Moron. “How old were you?”

Rodimus gritted his denta as he killed three processor threads in quick succession, the third managing to pull up a sense memory before it withered away to nothing. Heat, pressure, screams. Rodimus drew a deep in-vent and expelled air so hot it fogged in the air between them, trying to forcibly calm the frantic spin of his spark and pounding of his fuel pump. Pathetic, that such a small fragment of a memory could bring him so close to panic. He clenched his hands, released them, and cycled another deep vent.

“That’s none of your-” an icon on his HUD, flashing red among the myriad warnings which had popped up during the past few nano-kliks, suddenly exploded across his whole vision and Rodimus’s already frantic spark lurched in its casing. Incoming missile, a non-seeking one he recognised too well for it to be anything but Autobot, aimed not at him but a mechanometer to the side. At the mech he was supposed to be protecting.

“Get down!” he grabbed Deadlock by the elbow and yanked him away from the missile’s projected point of impact. The idiot prince stumbled, shouted, and Rodimus tackled him as the explosive detonated on impact with the ground.

The concussive blast knocked out his audials, the heat flared over his plating ineffectively, and Rodimus hissed through his clenched denta as shrapnel stung his frame. Something struck the base of his helm, and everything went black.

\---

Hot Rod whimpered as lightning flashed and thunder roared overhead, curling into Carrier’s warm frame. A warm field enveloped him, soothing when his spark spun faster at the thunderclaps and wrapping him in a feeling of being cared for. He pressed closer, nuzzling against dusty and pitted plating, chasing the warmth as it began to fade. Another thunderclap made him startle, and he whined when the flickering field around him didn’t react with a wash of calm and stability. Instead it vanished, and Hot Rod squeezed his optics shut as he pressed closer again. The armour beneath his touch crumbled, and without looking he could see the rust that ate outward from his carrier’s chassis, the crawling streaks of awful red-brown against his dirty gold plating.

The field around him cut out entirely, and Hot Rod pressed forward with a broken keen as the warmth faded further, further. Carrier couldn’t- couldn’t- he wouldn’t let him! Heat flared in Hot Rod’s chest, a burning corona around his spark that flowed through his lines into the too-cold frame wrapped around him. The plating under his little hands turned soft, dripping around his fingers as they sank in, and Carrier screamed.

He staggered back, liquid fire dripping from his fingers alongside molten sentio as the fire spread and spread, burning through the dust which coated everything until it caught in the cheap walls, until he was stumbling through the streets with fire in his wake, with a swelling field at his heels that he couldn’t read but knew to fear. He tripped, and fell, and the field buffeted him with the rage and pain of a hundred thousand mechs, with the heat of a city ablaze. He fell, and cried, and when he hit the ground it was dark again. Dark, and cold enough he almost missed the blaze of fire all around him.

The arm which reached back to him through the darkness was big enough he had no doubt its owner could lift him by the helm if he so desired, and Hot Rod shivered as he was led by the hand through its stretching shadows. He stumbled, and the hand around his tugged with a flicker of impatience against his field. His spark flared in his chest, fear and hope rising to a tangled knot in his throat as a voice echoed back from the towering, shadowed frame which dragged him along.

“Do well, and you shall be cared for.”

He opened his mouth to say he didn’t know what he was meant to do, but the words died in his vocaliser as the mech before him turned, light catching on his broken windshield and red optics burning bright in the darkness like embers pulled from the Pit itself. His spark shrank in on itself, trying to escape that gaze he _hatedlovedwanted_ as his vents raced faster and faster. _Please, please no-_

He pulled his hand free, scrambling back to put some distance between them, and fell back onto coarse sand as the lights rose to near-blinding. The arena the light revealed was familiar and strange and terrifying, the glowing dagger in his hand feeling as much like home as the slapdash walls coloured with splashes of all-too-identifiable fluids. The mech across from him was half again his size, a gangly mechling more weld and wound than anything else, dripping cloudy fluid onto the sand below him in a slowly spreading puddle. He smiled, oil and energon dripping from the gaps in his broken denta as he charged. One fist, the plating broken and rust-edged, swung and connected in the middle of Hot Rod's chest. His pedes left the ground, his back hit, and he skidded until he was back on his pedes, vents wheezing with the effort of expelling the sand.

**Do well** His voice echoed in Hot Rod's audial as the taller mech ling swung and hit again, this time plowing him through the sand shoulder-first so hard he felt something pop. He screamed, optic cleanser welling up and over as he got back up, and got back up, and got back up. He wanted to be out of here, wanted to go _home_, but home was gone. Home was ash and dust and death and _his fault his fault His Fault_. So he had to do well, he had to, or he would never feel the weight of those burning optics on him again and that thought hurt more than the repeated blows. The mechling stumbled as he came in for another blow and Hot Rod lashed out, aiming for the face.

His blade cut through the mechling's main fuel line and the world spun, pink spraying his hands, sizzling on his dagger. The light faded from the older mechling's optics and he jerked as rough hands pushed him down onto a box, a cube of energon in his hands. His empty, clean, shaking hands.

“Good first kill, brat.” Kup grinned around his cygar, sharp as the pride in his optics. “Nice and early.”

His glossa tasted like purged energon, his whole frame shaking hard enough to rattle his plating. “I didn't mean to.” Hot Rod said, his voice wavering and thin.

The mech in front of him laughed, light glinting on his cracked windshield and Pit-ember optics shining with the same cruel pride as the field that battered Hot Rod's trembling frame. “**You did**.”

His frame stilled and a smile spread across Hot Rod’s face as he nodded. “I did.” Rodimus agreed.


	6. Chapter 6

Deadlock had never realized just how _loud_ explosions were. Far more pressing than the ringing in his audials, though, was the frame that laid heavy over his. “Rodimus?” he reset his vocaliser and tried again, barely able to hear his own voice over the ringing. “Rodimus you can get off me.” he fully expected his guard to scramble up and away, he didn’t seem a very touchy-feely sort of mech, but the dark plated arms braced on either side of his helm didn’t move, nor did the weight on his back. “Rodimus?”

His guard didn’t so much as groan, and Deadlock’s engine missed a stroke as his systems kicked into an even higher overclocking gear. “Rodimus!” he pushed himself up with strength he hadn’t realized he had, Rodimus’s armoured weight disturbingly limp on top of him, but froze before twisting to grab his guard. Carrier had warned him, when teaching Overlord how to fly, that if a mech was hurt you shouldn’t move them unless you were sure their back and neck were okay. Something had hit Rodimus hard enough to knock him out, and with the size of some of the shrapnel shards embedded in the path around them Deadlock didn’t want to risk it.

“I’ve got optics on the prince!” a voice called, and Deadlock’s arms shook as he locked tem under himself.

“My guard!” he called as a trio of palace guards came running down the path, their heavy armour familiar in a way that soothed his frantic spark just a little bit. “Please, he’s hurt-”

“Don’t worry, Your Highness.” one of the guards said gently, kneeling in front of him as the other two moved past his field of vision. “He’ll be brought straight to the infirmary.”

“He- he saved me.” Deadlock said dumbly, and shivered convulsively as the warm frame on his back was lifted.

“And Knock Out will save him, if he needs it.” the guard said, grabbing him under the arms and pulling him to his pedes. “Come, Your Higness.” their touch on the back of his arm was gentle, and Deadlock let the guard steer him forward, his optics focused on the limp form of his personal guard hanging between the two bulkier palace guards. His chestplate prickled slightly where it had scraped against the path, a similar sensation cropping up in places across his back, and a handful of small stinging cuts that must’ve come from shrapnel. Shrapnel from the missile. Someone had tried to shoot him with a missile.

He didn’t even realize they’d entered the castle until the guard guiding him pushed him down into a chair and pressed a small cube of coolant into his shaking hand. His hand closed around it reflexively, and he rebooted his optics as he looked around, fuel pump speeding up again. “Where-”

“Your guard is being attended to, Your Highness.” the guard said, and Deadlock forced himself to actually look at the mech before him. Dull white and gold armour, with the royal red decorations all members of the palace guard wore.

“Thank you.” he rasped, and reset his vocaliser as he took a sip of the coolant. “What’s your designation?”

“Twinkle, Your Highness.” the mech inclined his head, and it took Deadlock a very long moment to realize the glyphs Twinkle used for his name were Vosnian. That made sense, considering he was a seeker. Deadlock wondered just how out-of-it he’d been, to not notice that earlier.

“Thank you, Twinkle.” he managed a smile, and lifted the little cube of coolant to his lips again. His armour chimed against itself dully, and he realized that his hands weren’t the only part of him shaking. His whole frame trembled with the aftermath of such urgent overclocking, his tanks churning and spark still spinning too hot and fast in his chassis. A missile. His processor kept looping back to that fact, that moment between Rodimus grabbing him and the blast wave hitting them both when he’d spotted the long shape in his proximity sensors. Someone had tried to shoot him with a missile.

It had been a stellar cycle since he and his brother were given personal guards, but only just now was it really sinking in that someone wanted him _dead_. Someone wanted him dead, and someone else had been willing to actually go through with it. Someone had tried to kill him. With a missile. And they would’ve succeeded, if not for Rodimus. Rodimus whose job it was to protect him, who claimed to be in it for the money alone but hadn’t hesitated to throw himself between Deadlock and the missile aimed to take his life.

Rodimus whose life was now in danger, because someone had wanted _him_ dead.

“Move, move, get out of my way.” a familiar shrill voice cut through the trembling fog of his processor, and Deadlock looked up to see his carrier shoving past the guards at the door. “Twinkle, outside.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” the guard bowed quickly and hurried out the door Carrier was so angrily pointing at. As soon as it slid shut, Carrier was on his knees in front of Deadlock, hands on the side of his helm and field ensconcing him in _concern love comfort_.

“Are you hurt?” Carrier’s voice strained, and Deadlock shook his helm. “Oh you poor bitty, look at you. Shaking like Zenith in a storm.”

Hearing his name, the Tarnish Vivid that all but lived at Carrier’s heels meowed loudly and leapt up into Deadlock’s lap, startling a laugh out of him. “Yeah, Zenny. Carrier was talking about you.” he stroked down the photovoltaic cat’s spine, and Carrier cooed as he rose from his knees to slide into the seat next to Deadlock’s, one wing settling behind his back.

“Come here.” Carrier said, sliding an arm around Deadlock’s shoulders and pulling him to lean against his creator’s chassis. “It’s alright, Carrier’s got you.” he murmured, other arm sliding around Deadlock’s side, and Deadlock shuddered as he slumped into his carrier’s hold.

“Someone was trying to kill me.” he said, the glyphs coming out thin and strained but still feeling heavy as boulders falling from his glossa. “They- they wanted to hurt me, and-”

“Shh, shh.” Carrier hushed him, hand lifting from the small of his back to stroke the back of his helm. “We hired Rodimus and Yellowjacket to keep you safe from those mechs.”

“And Rodimus might die because of it!” he cried, pulling away to stare at his creator’s too-calm face. In his lap, Zenith made a displeased noise at being jostled.

“Deadlock, darling.” Carrier’s hands lifted to cradle his face, claws resting oh so gently against his plating. “Knock Out is the best medic in all of Tarn. Your guard is in good hands.”

“I don’t want him to die.” Deadlock’s plating rattled with the force of the tremor that shook his frame, and Carrier pulled him into another hug, arms mountain-strong behind his back.

“Your sire will be here shortly.” Carrier murmured, and Deadlock buried his face in the top of his creator’s chassis, audial pressed to the front of one of his carrier’s shoulder vents. His own vents ached, his frame taut with energy he didn’t know what to do with, and Carrier’s arm across his lower back lifted to stroke gently down the back of his helm. Perfectly painted claws traced the grooves of his helm, scratched gently behind his audials, and Deadlock’s vents hitched. “It’s okay.” Carrier soothed, other hand rubbing gently at his arm. “It’s okay, I’ve got you.”

Sire’s field joined Carrier’s with a pulse of _concern support affection_, and Deadlock slumped against his carrier as his other creator burst into the room. Nano-kliks later, a familiar frame took the seat on his other side and strong arms wrapped around him, one hand pressed over his spark and the other pulling Carrier closer. Deadlock shuddered between them, frame shaking with the force of his ventilations as they became rough and uneven, sucking air through his too-hot frame in a desperate bid to cool it.

Sire’s field melded with Carrier’s around him, and Deadlock sank into the cocoon of _love concern **protection**_ readily. Carrier’s hand didn’t leave his helm until Sire bent over to rest his forehelm against the back of Deadlock’s, and even then the soothing touch didn’t abate for more than the nano-klik it took Carrier to get his arm around Deadlock’s shoulder kibble. Deadlock shuddered as Carried stroked down his back, perfectly filed and painted claws sliding gently along the seams of his armour while the flat of his palm pressed firmly against his plating. He was sure even Overlord wouldn’t dare tease him about this. He knew he wouldn’t, if it was his brother whose life had nearly been ended today.

“They will pay.” Sire promised once Deadlock had mostly cried himself out. The words came out a low rumble, field flaring with protective rage. “I swear on my spark, the mech responsible for putting you in this danger **will** be found, and he **will** be punished.” his arms flexed around Deadlock and Carrier, and at Carrier’s grumble about scuffed paint Sir Zenith meowed loudly, as if to remind Deadlock that he was, in fact, present. Present and not being petted or praised, if the volume was anything to go by.

Deadlock chuckled at the photovoltaic cat’s indignant reaction to Carrier’s distracted placation, and nodded at Sire. It was important to catch the would-be assassin, yes. It was also important to discover the mech behind the order, so he could be dealt with appropriately. Deadlock’s spark didn’t care about either of those things though; in his spark all he wanted was for Rodimus to be alright. Catching the would-be assassin could come later, once he knew his guard would be okay.

“Shall I go check Knock Out’s progress?” Sire asked, and Deadlock nodded again, not trusting his vocaliser after the amount of static he’d spat while his vents were working overtime.

“He’ll be fine.” Carrier assured him, and Deadlock let himself be leant back in his chair instead of against his carrier’s shoulder. “You, on the other hand, need your face cleaned up.”

“Carrieeerrrr.” he whined as his carrier produced a tightly folded one-use cleaning cloth and started patting it around Deadlock’s optics. “I can clean myself.”

“Yes, yes, I know.” Carrier didn’t stop cleaning the dried coolant from his face, and Deadlock didn’t try to stop him. When his carrier got like this, not even Sire could stop him fussing.

“Knock Out is nearly finished.” Sire said as he strode back into the room, and Deadlock’s helm snapped around to see his sire wearing the small, indulgent smile he only ever directed at his family. “He said that once your guard is settled in a medi-berth you can see him.”

“Thank you, Sire.” Deadlock managed a smile, but restrained himself from throwing his arms around his sire like an overexcited youngling.

“He was quite lucky.” Sire laid a hand on Deadlock’s shoulder, turning him back towards Carrier for further fussing. “From what I saw, the worst damage was to his shoulder and legs.”

“And he’ll recover?” Deadlock asked. Sire’s hand moved to the top of his helm and slid side to side.

“Knock Out and Hook are two of the best medics on Cybertron. “ he said, his field fond and sub-glyphs reassuring. “Some damaged limbs are well within their abilities.”

“My Prince, you wound me.” Knock Out said dryly, and Carrier sighed as he lifted the little cleaning cloth from Deadlock’s face.

“Go, see to your guard.” Carrier made a shooing motion, and Deadlock leaned forward to bump his forehelm against his carrier’s before standing. And promptly being reminded of the fact he had a lapful of photovoltaic cat when Sir Zenith yowled.

“Oh, sorry Zenny!” he stooped and gathered the ornary mechanimal in his arms, but when he made to give Carrier his pet back Carrier just shook his helm.

“Keep him, he makes good company at the side of a mediberth.”

“I take it you know that firsthand?” Sire teased, and Carrier swatted him. Deadlock smiled, and turned to follow Knock Out into one of the adjoining little rooms. Breakdown was still tucking the insulation tarp around Rodimus’s prone frame, and Deadlock sighed in relief at the sight of black and purple plating still vibrant and whole. Littered with scrapes and scratches, yes, but nothing worse.

“Your turn, now.” Knockout said as he guided Deadlock to sit in a chair by Rodimus’s berthside. “Hold still.” he ordered, and Deadlock set Zenith down in his lap. The photovoltaic cat looked at Knock Out warily, then huffed and settled on Deadlock’s thighs. The check-up didn’t last long, Knock Out dabbing antiseptic into the shallow gashes where shrapnel had caught his arms and smoothing a mesh strip over the slice up the side of one of his legs. Deadlock wondered how he’d not noticed that earlier, then quickly decided not to worry about it. He was fine, after all. Rodimus wasn’t.

“Care to tell me what happened to the two of you?” Knock Out asked as he put his tools away, and Deadlock shuddered.

“We were just walking in the gardens, and then Rodimus tackled me and- I guess the missile hit where we would’ve been?” it was the only explanation that made sense, really.

“And then exploded, peppering both of you with shrapnel?” Knock Out asked, turning around with the roll of mesh in one hand. Deadlock nodded. “Figures.” Knock Out rolled his optics. “Whoever did it must’ve been one pit of a coward, trying to kill an unarmed mech with a fraggin mortar.”

Deadlock stroked Zenith idly with one hand, his other resting on the edge of Rodimus’s berth. “Can I stay?” he asked, not looking at Knock Out. “Just until he wakes up.”

“Of course, Your Highness.” Knock Out said, his voice softening and sub-glyphs... indulgent? He couldn’t put his finger on it, but whenever Knock Out addressed him Deadlock got the distinct sense the doctor still thought of him as a youngling. “I’ll have Breakdown come by in a bit with some fuel.”

“Thank you.” Deadlock managed to meet Knock Out’s optics long enough for a small, polite smile. The doctor left the room shortly after, and Deadlock looked over Rodimus carefully. He had a few mesh patches, but either the damage hadn’t been as bad as he feared or it was hidden by his positioning on the mediberth and the insulation tarp tucked around his frame. His tense, twitching frame. A bad recharge flux? Deadlock hadn’t been able to do anything earlier, had just laid there until the guards arrived, but this he could help with.


	7. Chapter 7

Rodimus wasn’t sure if it was the recharge flux or the sensation of a restraint clamping down around his upper arm that dragged him back online, but either way he came up swinging. His fist connected with unprotected derma, damage reports filling the majority of his HUD while raw data churned along the edges. Temperature, proximity sensors, a rough thermal readout of his surroundings to supplement his still-booting optics. The restraint around his arm released, and Rodimus grabbed his assailant by the wrist, twisting it up behind their back. Their field flared in agony and Rodimus grinned viciously, letting his own field all but drip with satisfaction.

“You picked the wrong mech to mess with.” he snarled, twisting harder. There was the familiar feeling and sound of a ball joint popping out of place, and Rodimus smiled wider. Until his optics finally came online, and he minimised the damage reports to see whose shoulder he’d just dislocated. Slag, attacking the mech he was supposed to be cozying up to couldn’t possibly be good for him. He couldn’t just say he’d fragged up though, admitting weakness was unacceptable under any circumstances. He snarled and yanked Deadlock’s shoulder back the other way, popping it back into place.

“All that fancy tutoring and nobody ever taught you not to touch a mech in recharge?” he snarled, shoving Deadlock away.

“Sorry.” the prince grimaced, rubbing at the seam between his pauldron and chassis. Rodimus huffed and turned to survey the room he was in. Bare, clean, well-lit. Nothing like the office where The Hatchet took patients. Except for the smell. It was fainter here, but that antiseptic stench tickled his deepest olfactory sensors and he had to manually override several systems which tried to initialise at the smell.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Deadlock asked, and it took a few nano-kliks for Rodimus to realize he meant the recharge flux. He managed to shut down that recall thread before it could dredge up more than the most basic of impressions. Fire, fuel, fear. Still, he was glad his tanks were empty. 

“No.” he snapped, and hoped the growl of his engine came off as threatening.

“But why n-”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” he snarled, growling his engine deliberately this time. “Especially not with a thin-plated prettymech like you.”

“What does the weight of my armour have to do with anything?” Deadlock frowned. Rodimus rolled his optics.

“A mech like you could never understand.” he said harshly. Deadlock crossed his arms and pouted.

“You never know. I might surprise you.”

Rodimus rolled his optics again, this time letting all his exasperation fill his field. Apparently he had to spell this out for the moron. “You don’t even know how much you take for granted.” he said, his subglyphs sharp enough to cut. “You will **never** understand what mechs like me have been through.”

“Try me.” Deadlock jutted out his chin. Rodimus sighed. The things he did to get this overgrown magnamonkey off his damn back.

“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever had to do to survive?” he asked bluntly, keeping his subglyphs simple enough it was impossible to misunderstand him.

“What?”

“You heard me.” he smirked at the shocked look on Deadlock’s face, and on a whim decided to elaborate.“What’s the worst thing you’ve done to survive. The most illegal, depraved, unforgivable action you’ve taken because the alternative is _death_.”

“I-” Deadlock’s mouth opened and closed, little half-glyphs coming from his vocaliser as he obviously tried and failed to come up with anything. Rodimus’s smirk widened to a grin.

“Wanna guess what mine is?” he asked, and his spark spun faster at the look of uncomprehending horror on Deadlock’s face. “I’ve not made it this far on sheer luck and charisma, after all.”

“You-” Deadlock paused and reset his vocaliser. Rodimus grinned so wide his face hurt. He’d gotten so good at taking down his marks before they would fight back, he’d almost forgotten how fun it was to watch them _squirm_. “Did you, uh, kill someone?”

Rodimus could’ve cackled at the sheer timidity of Deadlock’s words. Not even a statement, he’d made it into a _question_. Had he forgotten what Rodimus did for a living? He managed to keep it down to a low chuckle, and wagged a finger at Deadlock. “Where’s your imagination, mech?” he teased, delighting in the confusion that flickered in Deadlock’s field. Now, what was the best way to tell this spoilt deceptibrat that his guard had been killing and enjoying it since he was little more than a sparkling?

Before he could figure that out, the door opened and a dingy blue speedster came in, a frown already on his sharp-featured face. “Your Highness, you really should’ve told me as soon as he woke up.”

“He’s not even been awake a klik, Knock Out.” Deadlock smiled, easy as every other time Rodimus had seen him. “I was asking him how he felt.”

“And how do you feel, Rodimus?” Knock Out asked, crossing over from the door to the side of Rodimus’s mediberth. His field was impeccably controlled, projecting _concern confusion care_ as he pulled a datapad from his subspace.

“Better than before.” Rodimus said, scanning the sheer volume of damage warnings stacked up one side of his HUD. His frame still hurt all over, but like frag was he about to tell this mech something like that. It wasn’t like there was anything that could be done about it either, he burnt through sensor blockers so fast it could easily double his bill just to keep the pain at bay. He was pretty used to it anyways.

“Well I should hope so.” Knock Out chuckled, rounding the berth to check something angled away from Rodimus which, he noticed belatedly, was connected to him by several wires. “Breakdown and I pulled a fair amount of shrapnel out of your frame. You’ve not suffered any permanent damage, but I need you to tell me how it feels to move your left shoulder and bend your knees.”

Shoulder and knees? Easy enough. He rolled his shoulder, then tensed as he realised nothing had happened. He tried again, this time aiming to lift his arm. Still nothing. Un-minimising the whole mess of damage reports, Rodimus flicked through them until he found the ones for his shoulder. He must’ve taken a piece of shrapnel right in the joint there, because not only was the servo itself damaged but so was the wire bundle that ran just under it. He was belatedly surprised he hadn’t bled out, given the size of the fuel line that ran through that same area, but he couldn’t focus on that fact for long.

“I can’t.” he forced out, grabbing his shoulder and filtering the damage reports for ones in his legs. He dismissed several about shallow gashes in his thighs before coming to the pair he was looking for. The servos and wires were intact, but the cables were frayed and the plating around them had taken quite a beating. Walking would hurt, but more than that he would be _slow_. With damage of this level he would be unable to run, unable to _fight_. “How long?” he asked, already running a mental tally of the fuel he had stashed away in various safehabs and boltholes throughout the city.

“Hmm?” Knock Out tilted his helm, and Rodimus gritted his teeth.

“How long until I have full use of my arm and knees again?”

“For your knees, three deca-cycles.”

That short a time? Huh, he thought it’d take longer.

“But-” Knock Out held up a finger, as if reading Rodimus’s thoughts. “That’s only if you stay on berthrest for at least the first two and a half to let them heal. If you exert yourself earlier, it could take up to three stellar cycles. And that’s assuming you don’t do further damage.”

Only a lifetime of training kept Rodimus from grimacing at that. He easily had fuel for a stellar cycle and a half at one of his longer term boltholes, but dropping off the map for that long while he was supposed to be playing personal guard... not a good idea. “And the shoulder?” he asked, grateful for how level his voice came out.

“Well, you’re going to need surgery.” Knock Out said bluntly. “The shrapnel really got you good. I’ll be consulting with Hook later, and by mega-cycle’s end we’ll have a plan and a timeline.”

Wow. All medics really were the same, huh? “Don’t bother.” he scoffed, and got twin looks of confusion from Knock Out and Deadlock both. “You think I’m going to pay _Hook’s_ price for surgery? The mech’s a servant of the crown, I could name five cheaper off the top of my processor.”

There was silence for a beat, then Knock Out started laughing. “I’d like to meet these mechs who’ll fix you up for cheaper than free.” he teased, clasping Rodimus’s immobile shoulder. 

Free? Rodimus frowned. That couldn’t possibly be right. “What’s the catch?” he asked, because nothing good ever came truly _free_.

“Rodimus, it may have escaped your notice these past few stellar cycles, but you’re a servant of the crown too. An unconventional one, I’ll admit, but you were wounded while defending the Prince’s life.” Knock Out smiled, a strange little thing that lacked any hint of malice or disgust or even irritation. “It was in your contract, after all. Any injuries sustained by a servant of the crown in the line of duty shall be treated at no expense.”

Rodimus cycles his audials once, then twice as he ran that chunk of audio through his processor a few times. “Are you stupid?” he asked after a few very long nano-kliks. “One of my arms is dead weight. I’ll not be able to walk properly, let alone _fight_, until my knees heal. I’m not fit to be a personal guard in this state.”

“And?” this time it was Deadlock who spoke, lips curling down in a small frown of utter confusion.

“And by this time tomorrow you’ll have another guard who can actually defend you, which will leave me no longer a servant of the crown. Just another mech who can’t afford the royal medics’ prices without selling some bits I’d much rather keep attached.” Rodimus crossed his arms, or tried to at any rate. He’d have to get his hands on a sling before leaving here. It’d probably be more comfortable than anything he could pull together on his own.

The Decepticons both stared at him in shock and confusion for a few nano-kliks, then Knock Out raised a hand to his mouth. If he was trying to hide his smile or muffle his laughter, he was doing a scrap job of it. Deadlock, on the other hand, seemed to come to his senses with a snap and reeled backwards a moment before lurching forwards to grab Rodimus’s disabled arm with both hands. “We would never throw you out so callously!” the prince exclaimed, his field crackling with distress too strong to be anything but genuine. “You were injured defending me, my creators would never fire you for doing your job.”

“But... I won’t be able to defend you until I’m healed.” Rodimus frowned.

“Then I will stay by my brother’s side and his guard can defend me until you are well.” Deadlock released Rodimus’s arm to cross his own, chin raised defiantly. “And I’m _ordering_ you to get better.”

Rodimus snorted and let his helm hang forward as he shook it slowly. He could almost understand the secondforged prince being an idiot, but for the ruling couple to not fire him when he became unable to do his job... this whole family was even more stupid than he’d thought.


	8. Chapter 8

“Heyyyyy Zenny.” Deadlock cooed, stooping to scoop up the photovoltaic cat from his spot in a sunny window well. “Ready to go see Rodimus?” he asked. Sir Zenith made an indignant noise, but made no attempt to jump out of Deadlock’s arms. “Aww, are you worried about him too?” he asked, starting towards the room Knock Out had set his guard up in for the duration of his berthrest. He’d expected, when he decided he would visit Rodimus every mega-cycle, that his guard would be no less inclined to conversation than he had been before. It had been a welcome surprise to discover that apparently ‘sitting in a mediberth doing nothing’ was worse than actually talking to him, in Rodimus’s opinion.

“I brought Zenny~” Deadlock called out as he entered his guard’s temporary quarters, and Rodimus tried to hide it but Deadlock saw the way his spoiler flicked briefly up at the words. If he was being perfectly honest, Zenith was probably at least half the reason Rodimus hadn’t tried to kill anyone yet. He deposited the photovoltaic cat in his guard’s lap, and Zenith butted his little helm up against Rodimus’s middle before making himself at home on Rodimus’s lap.

“Have you been behaving today?” he asked, and Rodimus’s resting glower deepened even as he ran his hand down Zenith’s backstrut. Deadlock bit back a laugh. “You know Breakdown will catch you and dump your aft back in berth, so why bother?”

“You’ve never been on berthrest, have you?” Rodimus muttered bitterly.

“I have, actually.” Deadlock patted his hip. “Fragged this joint up real good in a sparring accident once, had to do all my coursework from my berth for a solid deca-cycle.”

“Well, I’ve not got coursework to keep me busy.” Rodimus slouched back against the wall, crossing his arms petulantly. Zenith meowed up at him in distinct complaint, and Rodimus lowered a hand again to resume petting the photovoltaic cat. His shoulder, Hook had informed Deadlock, would be fully operational in half the time it took his knees to recover. The benefits of a clean break.

“I could arrange to take my tutoring in here, when I’m not with Overlord.” Deadlock offered with a grin, which only widened at the face Rodimus pulled. In the deca-cycle and change since Rodimus was confined to this mediberth, he’d learnt quite a lot about his guard. Mostly through his reactions to things, as any direct questions made him close up tighter than anything else. Not that Deadlock could really blame him, considering the picture painted by things Rodimus let slip when he wasn’t paying attention.

“Please, don’t.” Rodimus’s tone was perfectly dry, but his sub-glyphs were petulant enough to whine for him.

“What, not interested in-” he double checked his coursework for the remainder of the week, specifically in the few classes he didn’t share with his brother. “Tarnish political history? There’s some fascinating ties between our culture and Tethrian culture.”

“What culture?” Rodimus frowned, confusion flickering through his field.

“Tethrian. They’re our southern neighbour, and Vos’s western.” he explained, and despite his complaints Rodimus seemed eager to listen. “Pretty new as a kingdom, but their primary dialect is the one we’ve been using in trade with Vos for uh, as long as we’ve been trading with them?”

“How’d they manage that?” Rodimus asked, and Deadlock grinned. His guard could play recalcitrant all he wanted, but his curiosity gave him away. It was kinda charming.

“Well it’s not like the folks who lived there were gonna make a new language when the Empire crumbled.” he teased. Rodimus rolled his optics, but Deadlock swore he saw the corner of his lips twitch upwards. “I could always go into the linguistic history though, if you’re that interested.”

“Primus, no.” Rodimus chuckled, and Deadlock couldn’t stop himself from beaming. Rodimus seemed not to have any frame of reference for genuine kindness or compassion, so Deadlock considered every genuine laugh and wide-optic’d look of wonder as something of a victory.“New subject.” his guard insisted.

“Hmm.” Deadlock tapped his chin with one finger and pulled an exaggerated thinking face. History was out for the day, and in retrospect he was glad Rodimus had said no to Deadlock taking his lessons in here, he didn’t want to put Rodimus in the sort of mood that talking politics always brought on, so... “Exploits and shenanigans?” he suggested with as little hesitation as he could manage. Rodimus’s ‘shenanigans’ were horrifying as often as not, he spoke of brutality and fuel deprivation as casually as a mech discussing their favourite polish, but with every story Deadlock learnt a little more about his guard.

“Sure.” Rodimus nodded, and Deadlock cast around briefly for a story he could tell that wouldn’t be _too_ incriminating if Knock Out or Breakdown walked in in the middle. Something Rodimus never seemed to care about, but given the punishments he’d mentioned so off-handedly as to imply they were common Deadlock couldn’t say he was surprised.

“Alright, how about this.” he settled more comfortably in the chair, arms resting on the edge of Rodimus’s berth, knuckles not quite brushing his guard’s armour. It was closer than Rodimus usually let him get, but Deadlock couldn’t tell if that was because Rodimus was allowing it or because his proximity hadn’t been noticed. “When I was twenty vorns old, I almost got caught making out with one of the knights in training.”

“Really?” Rodimus raised a skeptical optic ridge.

“His mentor was a real hard-aft. He would’ve been expelled from the program if he got caught ‘defiling one of the princes.’” he affected a thick Vosnian accent and mocking tone for the last bit, and Rodimus snorted. “He’s almost a full-fledged knight, now.”

“Have I met him?” Rodimus asked. Deadlock shrugged.

“His name’s Gigatron?”

Rodimus shook his helm. “I don’t really chit-chat with the palace guards.”

“I’ll introduce the two of you sometime.” Deadlock promised with an easy grin. “You’d get along.”

“Ha! Not likely.” Rodimus’s hand stilled on Zenith’s back, though his fingers continued to curl and uncurl against the photovoltaic cat’s colourful plating.

“Why not?” Deadlock asked, and Rodimus shook his helm.

“Dunno if you’ve noticed, but I don’t exactly get along with Decepticons.”

“You get along with me pretty well.” Deadlock pointed out, and Rodimus rolled his optics.

“Don’t flatter yourself, I’m being paid to put up with you.”

“Nah, you like me.” Deadlock grinned, leaning further onto the mediberth. He wasn’t surprised anymore that Rodimus kept coming back to his paycheck as the reason for staying, not when his guard had admitted a few mega-cycles ago that until this job he was living payment to payment. “Also, your turn.”

“Fine, fine.” Rodimus huffed, and resumed petting Zenith as he thought. “One time Clashy and I were supposed to be casing a target’s bolt hole, bitty stuff for new mercs, but we uh, wound up exploring some other holes instead and took like three times as long because of it. I got my paint _stripped_ for that.”

Deadlock winced. It took a lot to strip paint from plating, yet Rodimus spoke of it so casually. “Clashy?” he asked, and easy as he'd opened up Rodimus shut right down. Deadlock winced again, this time internally. “Sorry, forgot you-”

“Don’t like mechs prying into my personal business?” Rodimus shifted, drawing his leg away from Deadlock’s hand on the berth. “How would you like it?”

Deadlock’s spark ached in his chassis at the crackle of distrust that snapped across the edge of Rodimus’s field, sharp and bitter between them. Frantically, he cast about for a topic he could change to before the silence stretched long enough to become awkward. His end-of-deca-cycle meeting with Sire was the first thing to pop up, having been just last evening, but he stopped himself before mentioning it. Rodimus would never admit it, but he’d become distressed last deca-cycle when Deadlock mentioned Sire being unhappy with him. Combined with everything else about him, his well-practiced expressionless mask and unfamiliarity with youngling games and the way his armour never quite relaxed from where it sat tight against his plating... Rodimus’s caretaker had been a bad one, Deadlock was sure, and discussing his own sire would only worsen his guard’s already soured mood.

“Did you hear about the cube match last night?” he asked, and Rodimus relaxed slightly, his hand resuming its motion along Zenith’s back.

“Yeah. Knock Out had it on in his office.” Rodimus inclined his helm towards the wall between the recovery room they were in and what Deadlock knew to be Knock Out and Breakdown’s personal chambers. Not that Rodimus had believed it when Deadlock told him that’s what the rooms adjacent to the infirmary were. The fact that he thought a medic actually caring for their patients’ well-being was strange was a whole other level of concerning, and one Deadlock was in no way equipped to handle. Not that he was properly equipped to handle whatever trauma Rodimus was carrying around from his caretaker’s mistreatment, but he could at least try to nudge his guard towards the tank-turning realisation Deadlock had had at the end of last deca-cycle.

It would take time, Rodimus was stubborn as a diesel mule and seemed to have some sort of issue with admitting any sort of fear or discomfort, which was ridiculous when his spoiler clearly broadcast both, but Deadlock was willing to be patient. Plus, Rodimus’s realisation taking time would give _him_ time to earn his guard’s trust. Maybe even to the point Rodimus would confide in him when he realized the fear that must’ve shaped so much of his early life. And if that day ever came, Deadlock would be ready with an offer of continued employment. He wouldn’t need a personal guard forever, at least he sorely hoped not, but even after that need passed Rodimus was more than qualified to be a castle guard. Maybe even a knight, though Deadlock doubted he’d accept that.

“I sent Overlord to the infirmary once, playing cube.” he said to break the barely-comfortable silence. “It malfunctioned and dragged me way up in the air, and Overlord broke my fall.”

“With his helm?” Rodimus asked, and Deadlock chuckled.

“Nah, with his frame. His whole chestplate was dented in.” he placed his hands in front of his own frame to indicate how big the dent had been. “I got off with just a fragged up wrist.” he twirled the joint in question, long-healed, and Rodimus snorted.

“Is that what folks mean when they say they’ve got cube wrist?” he asked, and Deadlock giggled.

“Nah, that’s a pro thing. I think I just sprained it?” Deadlock shrugged. “It was a while ago.”

“I bet Knock Out remembers.” Rodimus mused, and Deadlock snorted.

“Probably.” he agreed, sitting back in his chair. As much as he hated the fact Rodimus had gotten hurt, at least it was giving him a chance to get to know his guard better. Maybe even befriend him, though he was sure Rodimus wouldn’t want to admit that. He wondered how Rodimus would react if he knew Deadlock already considered him a friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Name and concept of Tethrius came from [Droid](http://hypotheticalandroid.tumblr.com). you should follow them, they're cool.


	9. Chapter 9

Rodimus stretched, first rolling his left arm in its socket and then flexing his knees in various positions, testing the limits of his newly-repaired cables. They felt a little stiff, but nothing he couldn’t fix with a few days of training. Yellowjacket was going to wipe the floor with him in sparring, though, which he wasn’t exactly looking forward to.

“Feeling better?” Deadlock asked as soon as Knock Out waved him out of the still-weird office and into the hall.

Rodimus gave a single nod, and the prince practically beamed at him before turning to head off to the training room. Because of course Knock Out had finally cleared him to leave the infirmary right before the cycle where Yellowjacket would have free reign to beat his aft to the pit and back. His knees tingled a little with every step, a disconcerting prickle up and down his sensornet, but he did his best to ignore it. He was up off the berth, out of that Primus-damned room, pit even being back at Deadlock’s side was a relief after the past few deca-cycles.

“I’ve instructed Yellowjacket to go easy on you for the next five mega-cycles.” Deadlock said out of the blue as they approached the door to the training room. Rodimus’s helm whipped sideways to stare at his charge so fast he swore he felt his processor rattle inside it.

“You what?”

“You’re still recovering, so I told him to go easy on you.” Deadlock said, field bright and happy like he hadn’t just admitted to broadcasting Rodimus’s weakness. What sort of moron _was_ he?

“He doesn’t have to.” Rodimus insisted. The harder he trained, the faster he’d work the extra tension out of his cables and get back to proper working form. Concessions for weakness only encouraged further weakness, Yellowjacket knew that as well as he did.

“Well I couldn’t exactly ask you to go easy on him, now could I?” Deadlock asked rhetorically, plowing on before Rodimus could even consider how blindingly stupid _that_ request would’ve sounded. “But you match the level of effort he’s putting in, every time. So I asked him to keep it light today, and ramp you back up to full speed gradually.”

Gradually? Rodiums had to consciously reign in a snarl of his engine, as well as a flare of flames that licked at the edges of his plating, a few even flicking out around the base of his spoiler hub. He didn’t _do_ gradual. Zero to a hundred in 2.8 nano-kliks, first sparks to a roaring inferno in less than that, release from medical to hard work... okay that usually took at least half a mega-cycle given the nature of his usual job but like frag was he gonna let himself be slowed down to half a _deca_-cycle by some deceptibrat.

“We match each other.” he told Deadlock, realizing somewhat belatedly that the prince had apparently _noticed_ how neither he nor Yellowjacket ever went all out on each other. They were overdue to do so, honestly, but that would entail using their signature abilities and that’d _probably_ get them fired. Which, given how invested Optronix was in this job going smoothly... yeah, bad idea. He repressed the urge to shudder at the thought of Optronix’s potential reaction, forcibly redirecting his thoughts before his processor could latch onto that thread and catastrophize the absolute frag out of it.

“How did you notice, by the way?” he asked, genuinely curious. He and Yellowjacket sparred at the same time as the princes, and they were trained enough to keep track of their charges while in active combat but Deadlock had no such training.

“Apart from that first time, you two always fight to a draw.” Deadlock’s field flickered smug for an instant, and Rodimus felt his mouth curling up in a smirk.

“Guess you’re not actually as stupid as you look.” he teased, and Deadlock laughed.

“I try.”

A silence fell between them as they continued, and Rodimus gave Deadlock a quick scan. He hadn’t seen the Prince since that damn meeting with his sire, and though the King wasn’t known for his temper... well, Thunderclash wasn’t either. It wasn’t half the same, and he knew it, but somewhere along the way he’d actually started to _care_ if his idiot charge got hurt. It was the only way to explain why he’d reacted as quickly as he did when the missile came down, why he’d tackled Deadlock instead of just yelling Bomb and diving for cover like he would’ve if it were Yellowjacket next to him. He wasn’t sure when it had happened, but he didn’t like it.

Even fantasizing about killing him had lost its appeal sometime during his extended berthrest, though he had no doubt he’d be able to do the deed when the time came. A quick slit and sear of his carotid lines while he recharged, not exactly subtle or painless but it would be neat and relatively quick. At least he could still imagine setting the castle ablaze for kicks, though that stirred the flames under his plating something awful. He couldn’t actually recall the last time he’d gone so long without utilising his fire, full and proper. It made his lines itch to think about.

“Good luck.” Deadlock said as they neared the doors to the training room, and Rodimus gave him a look as he let confusion flit through his field. “In your sparring match.” Deadlock clarified, and Rodimus rolled his optics.

“Luck isn’t going to have anything to do with it.” Rodimus said as he palmed the door’s operation panel. Deadlock strode in with a bounce in his step, and Rodimus made sure to lock the entrance on his way in. It clicked shut behind him with a satisfactorily heavy sound, and he caught the pair of tag-daggers Yellowjacket threw at his head with ease, one in each hand.

“Your reflexes are intact.” Yellowjacket observed. Rodimus spun one of the pigment coated imitation blades to point it up between his middle two fingers as he curled his hand into a fist. Deadlock sniggered as he walked over to pick up his own preferred practice sword from the rack and dip it in pigment.

“I wasn’t even down for a stellar cycle.” Rodimus retorted as he spun both daggers into functional grips. “And you know me.”

“Full throttle.” Yellowjacket nodded, a familiar smirk spreading across his face. “Come at me.”

“With pleasure.” Rodimus purred, and lunged.

\---

It had been almost a stellar cycle since Rodimus got off berthrest after his little run-in with a missile, and he could solidly confirm that Deadlock was being _weird_. Just inside Rodimus’s personal space whenever he could manage it, smiling too much, making offers that Rodimus would’ve pegged as an attempt at garnering a favour if Deadlock wasn’t so blindingly incompetent on that axis. Seriously, Decepticons in general were horrifically inexperienced at keeping a balance of favours, but Deadlock was just... _bad_. So the offers of fancy fuel and turns with new gadgets and expensive paints, Rodimus couldn’t make heads or tails of. He refused each one, of course. Called it professionalism. Deadlock would just pout if Rodimus said he didn’t trust a deceptibrat not to turn around and leverage it against him somehow in the future.

And wasn’t that just a kick in the denta, that he was starting to actually care what his moronic charge thought and felt. Deadlock was so ridiculously thin-plated, only mostly literally, that Rodimus was finding it harder and harder to be his usual abrasive self. Which was, of course, how he’d wound up getting dragged along in a truly awful ‘sneak’ out of the castle to visit a festival in the merchants’ district. He probably should’ve argued or something, Yellowjacket would no doubt tell him as much when they got back, but Deadlock had made that stupid _face_ and now they were trying to sneak through back alleys towards the growing noise of a crowd up ahead.

“We’d attract less attention if we blended in with the crowd.” he told the prince yet again. Deadlock snorted.

“Yeah, sure, right up until someone noticed the fact that my _entire frame_ is Decepticon Red and everyone in a ten block radius figured out who I am.” he gestured at himself, and Rodimus couldn’t deny that yeah, the fact that his charge’s paint job was mostly the royal colour made blending in harder. They darted across another street, this one with a few stalls lining it, and Rodimus skidded to a halt just inside the mouth of the new alley.

“Hold up.” he said, taking a few steps backwards and looking over at a little corrugated metal stall set up in front of three moderately sized booths made of threadbare insulation tarps. A gaggle of younglings stood chatting around it, and Rodimus took another couple steps back so he could see the actually quite nice hand-painted sign at his optic level. “This way.” he beckoned the prince back into the street, and herded him towards the little booth.

“Hey, brats.” he raised his voice only slightly, enough to get their attention without alerting the whole street. “How much for a full-frame job?” he threw an arm around Deadlock’s shoulders to keep him from squirming away, jabbing his other thumb at his charge.

The younglings looked at each other, and brought their helms together for some poorly-hushed debate before turning bright grins on him. “Funny thing. How much ya got?”

“Ha Ha.” Rodimus deadpanned, fighting the smile that wanted to tug at his lips. “I’ll give you a hundred shanix apiece for your absolute fanciest.”

The younglings’ optics lit up bright, and three of the five surged to grab Deadlock, tugging him into the middle booth, chattering excitedly over each other. Rodimus fished the shanix from his subspace, ten large coins he tossed down on the makeshift table. The one sitting at it scooped them all into their own subspace with a beaming grin, and the fourth came up to grab Rodimus by the wrist. “Can I paint you too?” she asked, voice crackly in the way of a youngling who survived a severe vent infection. Rodimus paused, glanced at the shifting booth where Deadlock was surrounded by younglings armed with paintbrushes, then nodded at the femmeling in front of him.

“Let me sit so I can see his booth.” he said, and the femmeling beamed as she hurried to grab a crate for him to sit on. He settled down at her direction, fixed his optics on Deadlock’s location with his thermal overlay mod, and split his attention between that and the surrounding street while the femmeling worked. She chattered as she did so, though he gave her no more than noncommittal hums in reply, and as she worked along his limbs he thoroughly tuned her out. Watching Deadlock hold still in awkward positions, Rodimus guessed the younglings painting him were having more fun with it than the one who’d asked to decorate him. It was almost charming, how willingly Deadlock struck and held poses for the little ones. Rodimus shook his helm slightly. Weakness drawn to weakness, that’s all it was.

His painting was finished well before Deadlock’s, but it wasn’t until the front tarp-flaps of his charge’s booth spread outwards that Rodimus rose from his seated watch. Two younglings sidled out, holding the tarp fully open while the third tugged Deadlock forward. His dark hand was decorated with shimmery silver paint, the cheap sort that was just flecks of shiny metal shavings in a thin grey medium, but the arm that followed had Rodimus’s vents stalling. Barely any of the Decepticon Red was still visible, hidden under swirls and whorls and glyphs painted in flat black and a far-too-familiar purple.

His chassis had more red visible, but the stripes were no thicker than the streaks of black paint that ran horizontal across his plating, dotted with purple glyphs that Rodimus quite deliberately didn’t read. The string of geometric curls up the middle of Deadlock’s breastplate and around his collar, the more curvy and delicate ones that filled his finials, the paint brushed in sharp curves under his optics that zig-zagged down to end just even with the edges of his pale and shimmering lips like the finest of war paints...

Deadlock _burned_ in his overlay, and Rodimus disabled it as he looked down at himself so he wouldn’t sear his optics. And was promptly quite glad he’d done so, as his already-high temperature rocketed up at the sight of bright red glyphs painted across his plating. “Uh, thanks.” Deadlock said awkwardly, and Rodimus reflexively looked to his charge. He quickly looked aside again, acutely aware of how much heat his frame must be dumping. It was just some paint. Just paint some dumb younglings had put on his charge because they thought it looked pretty.

Rodimus hated that he couldn’t disagree with their logic. Deadlock looked _amazing_ in the colours of an Autobot, sleek and dangerous and okay perhaps a tad gaudy but it was a festival, that was sorta expected. Rodimus shook his helm again minutely and strode over to Deadlock, offering his charge an arm. If they were going to be in a crowded area, he didn’t want to be out of contact with the prince even for a minute. Deadlock stared at him, and Rodimus rolled his optics. “You wanted to go to the festival?” he prompted, and Deadlock startled. Rodimus didn’t even need his HUD's thermal overlay to know the prince’s temperature spiked at that, he could feel the change himself when Deadlock looped an arm through his.

“Yes, please.”

Rodimus led Deadlock away from the tittering younglings, who now had plenty of money to fuel themselves, and bumped his shoulder against Deadlock’s kibble as they walked. “Don’t keep your helm down.” he muttered as they headed towards the louder, more crowded streets. “It makes you look suspicious.”

“Oh. Okay.” Deadlock straightened up some, thankfully not far enough for Rodimus to have to tell him to un-correct his posture, and when Rodimus nodded Deadlock smiled. “Thank you, by the way.”

“For what?” Rodimus frowned. This whole trip had been Deadlock’s idea.

“For helping, well, disguise me.” he gestured to himself, barely recognizable under all the black and purple paint.

“Hey, you get in trouble I get in trouble.” Rodimus shrugged. “Oh hey, hot bismuth nests.”

“Hot what?” Deadlock frowned, and Rodimus turned to look at him properly, letting his field convey the depth of his shock.

“You’re _how old_ and you’ve never had bismuth nests?”

Deadlock’s silence was absolutely damning. Rodimus heaved a sigh and tugged his charge towards the stall, shouldering past a few mechs headed further down the street. “It’s not a festival without a bismuth nest.” he informed the prince.

“With hot oil and tellurium powder.” the femme he’d got in line behind added with a smile. Rodimus nodded.

“It’s hardly a proper bismuth nest without it.” he nodded. Those were just the facts, really. “Some people add whipped or chilled gallium, but it always melts too fast for me.” Rodimus told Deadlock, who nodded quite solemnly. Seriously, between the two of them how was _he_ the one who knew what a festival was like? Okay sure he’d usually been working during them, but he’d still been!

And, well, he guessed he was working this time too, but the other way around. And this time he had money he could spend, and nobody venting down his neck to get back to the guild, and really if you thought about it it was practically his _duty_ to make sure Deadlock got to enjoy everything the festival had to offer. Safely. With Rodimus at his side.

He wondered if he could goad Deadlock into using that supernaturally accurate aim of his to win some of those ludicrously oversized prizes at the incredibly rigged booths.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Personal headcanon: in Cybertronian culture, adding one of another mech's colours to your paint job as an accent is a way to show intent to court them, and couples will often incorporate each other's colours in more extensive ways.
> 
> The car I based Roddy’s speed stats on is the Lamborghini Centenario, which was TLK Hot Rod’s alt mode. Felt appropriate.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember how you got two chapters of Deadlock PoV in a row earlier? Time for two chapters of Roddy PoV because holy _slag_ last chapter was getting long.

Rodimus came to a halt with the quiet clunk of two chestplates meeting and not rebounding, vents working hard and knees Not Particularly Happy about the extended rigorous activity he’d just subjected them to. He’d seen dances in the festival square countless times, but he’d never gotten to dance in one until today. It had been... more fun than he was willing to admit, if he was being honest with himself. This whole mega-cycle had been so much more enjoyable than he’d expected.

“There you are.” a deep, booming voice cut through the light chatter of other dancing pairs now separating around them, and Rodimus _froze_. No, not him, please Primus not him. This was his job, nobody else’s! He spun on his heel and dropped into a crouch as all his sensors focused on the dark mech who towered helm and shoulders above the crowd he waded through. Rodimus tried to pool fire under the plating of his palms, but his joints felt like they’d been filled with sand, stiff and unmoving. Deadlock behind him, civilians around him, weapons in his subspace instead of strapped to his plating where he could actually _use_ them. He couldn’t possibly win, but he couldn’t just roll over and accept defeat either. That would be almost as bad as failing the test this certainly was.

“Gigaaaa.” Deadlock whined, and the shock that fired through Rodimus helm to pede-tip felt like being dunked in liquid nitrogen and molten metal at the same time. His optics flicked over the readouts he’d gotten back from automatic scans, and he furled his field in tight so Deadlock wouldn’t feel the hot flash of embarrassment that filled it. The kibble, the helm, the paint job, it was all wrong. Not to mention the fact this mech wore a red Decepticon insignia on the right side of his chestplate instead of having a purple Autobrand on his left shoulder.

Stupid, sloppy. He’d let himself get so distracted he misidentified one of the palace guards as... as what? Even thinking of him as an enemy made Rodimus’s spark lurch in its casing, his restrained field shivering with the strength of the visceral denial that ripped through him. He shunted that processor thread aside without mercy, though the aftershocks of it still made his hands want to tremble as he refocused on the situation he was actually in. The still very-not-good situation. The presence of a palace guard meant Deadlock’s absence had been noticed, and the prince would surely be punished for going out into the city, breaking the rules set to keep him safe. Rodimus wondered if Megatron would handle the discipline personally, then quickly shoved that aside as well. He didn’t need to be dwelling on that, not when failing to stop Deadlock or covertly alert guards to do it for him meant he’d probably be getting sacked.

The prince wouldn’t be his problem then, just- his vents stalled, spark spinning faster in its casing. Just Optronix’s anger, just a punishment fitting the crime of fragging up the most important job he’d ever taken because he got stupid, complacent, _soft_-

“Rodimus?”

Rodimus couldn’t stop the snarl of his engine as he spun away from the touch to his back, combat subroutines spinning up and automatically assessing his surroundings with clinical precision. Neutrals, no threat. Palace guard, major threat. Prince Deadlock- his HUD flickered, glitching as it tried to register the prince as both a non-threat and active assailant. Rodimus shook his helm and forcibly powered down that program. He couldn’t even tell how many systems were overclocked right now, but from the way his plating vibrated against his substructure he guessed it was a lot. Deadlock’s field reached out to brush his, tentative, worried, and Rodimus could’ve laughed. The useless prince, worried for a mech who could take him and everyone else in the square down in under a klik. With the way the flames under his plating kept licking at his seams, he’d bet he could have the whole festival ablaze in two kliks at the outmost if he just let loose.

“Rodimus, we’re headed back to the castle now.” Deadlock said, his tone too measured, too even. Rodimus’s fuel pump missed a stroke as it jumped in speed, and he did his best to school his face back into a neutral mask as he nodded. Primus, he didn’t even _want_ to know what sort of face he’d been making earlier. He fell in step behind Deadlock, letting the large Decepticon lead the way as he tried to get his frame back under control.

Returning to the castle took half as long as getting away from it had, since they were taking the main streets instead of back alleys, and by the time they walked back in the front gates he had most of the overclocking manually shut off and the rest on pause, though the aftershocks still wracked his frame and if his armour weren’t clamped down he was sure he’d be rattling like a cheap tin roof in a windstorm. The palace guard escorted them towards a pair of big doors with fancy engravings on them, and Rodimus’s ventilations stalled when the big mech stepped aside to gesture them through. This was the throne room. Would he be expected to stand by and watch as Deadlock received his punishment?

He curled his hands into fists to stop them from shaking. He could do this, he had to be able to handle seeing the prince in pain if he was going to do his job when the time eventually came. Just because he could didn’t mean he wanted to, though. It wasn’t- he cycled a deep vent and forced his shoulders down to a semblance of a casual posture. It wasn’t any fun watching someone get hurt if he didn’t have a hand in it, that was all. Same as always. He’d never even liked watching the fights back home, once he grew out of them.

“Deadlock.” the king said as they walked in, and Rodimus pulled his field as tight to his fame as it would go. That tone never boded well for the one it was aimed at, nor anyone near them.

“Sire.” Deadlock stopped a respectful distance from the dias and gave a low bow that Rodimus hurried to copy.

“Come here.” the king beckoned, and Rodimus stayed rooted to the spot as Deadlock approached his sire’s throne. “What is the meaning of this?” the king gestured at Deadlock’s chassis, and Rodimus was suddenly quite glad he stood alone as his temperature skyrocketed. He’d almost forgotten, in the rush of making sure Deadlock experienced the festival properly, that the prince was painted up with romantic glyphs in damn near his own colours. He rubbed at the glyph for Infinity which sat in bright red over his spark, smudging the lines hopefully beyond recognisability, though there was nothing to be done about the colour.

“Festival paints, Sire.” Deadlock kept his helm bowed, shoulders taut, and Rodimus had to aggressively shut down the overclocking protocols trying to kickstart his combat mode. His job was to protect Deadlock from outside threats, not from his sire’s idea of punishment. “The younglings who painted them were quite enthusiastic.”

“Quite skilled, for the work of younglings.” the king’s optics slid over to Rodimus, who stood very very still and wished he could vanish at will like Mirage and Grandswitch.

“I was surprised too.” Deadlock chuckled, tense and audibly forced. The king looked over at Deadlock, his too-blue optics scrutinising for a moment before his helm tipped forward with a heavy sigh.

“I hope you understand why I am disappointed.” he said, his voice low and rumbling in a way that set off a fresh round of overclocking attempts.

“Yes, Sire.”

“You were under strict orders not to leave the castle unaccompanied. After the attempt on your life-”

“He wasn’t alone, though.” Rodimus said, and his spark fairly froze in its rotation when both Decepticons turned their optics on him. Primus, why had he _said_ that? His job description didn’t include saving the prince’s aft from discipline over stupid decisions!

“Do explain.” the king said, his tone low and threatening as he leaned forward to better look down at Rodimus. Frag, he was fired after this anyways, might as well keep doing his job til the last nano-klik.

“You hired me to protect him.” he reminded the king, letting words spill from his vocaliser without letting himself stop to think about them. “I couldn’t dissuade him from leaving the castle, so I accompanied him as his guard. I suggested festival paints to conceal his identity somewhat, and stayed at his side the entire time we were beyond the castle walls. He left the castle, yes, but at no point was he unaccompanied.” his optics flicked from the king’s face to Deadlock, grinning like he’d just been handed Hadeen itself. “Your Majesty.” he tacked on as he looked back to the king, spark shuddering as blue optics bored into his. He was so, _so_ fired.

“You make a fair point.” the king straightened in his throne, and every thread in Rodimus’s processor dissolved in an instant.

“What?”

“Deadlock, you still left without permission. You gave your carrier and I quite a fright.” the king reached out to grasp Deadlock by the shoulder, and Rodimus cringed. The sort of kibble Deadlock had there was _not_ fun to have crushed, and no decent disciplinary injury was treated right away. “But since you did bring your personal guard along, you will only be grounded for two deca-cycles instead of a stellar cycle.”

Rodimus blinked. Cycled his audials and replayed the verdict. Deadlock’s creators’ idea of discipline was... keeping him inside? He already spent most of his time inside anyways.

“Yes, Sire.” Deadlock’s shoulders slumped, dejection clear as day even without his field close enough to read. Rodimus wondered what the frag Deadlock had been expecting that he wasn’t relieved to get off with something as simple as _grounding_.

“And Rodimus?” the king said as Deadlock turned to descend the steps from the dias, helm still hung low. Here it was, if he was lucky he’d have time to pick up what few things weren’t in his subspace before they threw him out of the castle. “Thank you for keeping Deadlock safe.”

“Um, you’re welcome?” he hedged, and the king chuckled.

“Perhaps when this assassination threat has been dealt with, we can offer you a position as a palace guard.” he smiled, and Rodimus had precisely no clue how he was supposed to react to that. “But that is a discussion for a later date.” the king waved a hand dismissively. “Go, Starscream will send you a list of places Deadlock is not to be allowed until his punishment s up.”

The twist of Deadlock’s face at that read loud and clear he’d hoped to use Rodimus’s ignorance to his own advantage. Rodimus gave a polite nod, then remembered he was addressing the king and corrected it to a full bow. “Come on.” Deadlock muttered as he passed, and Rodimus straightened to follow the prince back out into the hallway, where the hulking palace guard still waited. “I can’t believe you’d tattle on me like that, Gigs!” Deadlock whined, and the guard shook his helm.

“Wasn’t me. I think it was Overlord’s guard.”

“Oh.” Rodimus’s optics flicked to the little missed calls icon at the edge of his HUD. “I guess that’s why he tried to comm me earlier.”

“You think?” Deadlock huffed, and crossed his arms.

“How bad?” the guard asked, and Deadlock scuffed his heel on the floor.

“Two deca-cycles.”

“Ouch.”

Ouch? Rodimus couldn’t resist raising an optic ridge. Was this a Decepticon thing? Were they really _that_ soft that they didn’t even discipline their younglings properly?

“Oh, I almost forgot.” Deadlock turned to Rodimus with a smile. “This is Gigatron.”

“Nice to meet you, Rodimus.” Gigatron held out one massive hand, and Rodimus wondered what Deadlock had been thinking. He doubted the prince had any of the mods he’d need to comfortably interface with a mech this much bigger than him. Not that he had any of those either, but it wasn’t like Autobots fragged gentle anyways.

“Likewise.” he said, gripping the offered hand firmly and shaking it.

“Thanks for keeping this idiot alive.” Gigatron inclined his helm at Deadlock, who rolled his optics.

“Just doing my job.” Rodimus mustered up a smile, and Gigatron laughed.

“Come on, Rodimus.” Deadlock grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him a few steps past Gigatron. “I’m going to my rooms to wash up.”

\---

Rodimus leaned against the wall outside of Deadlock’s quarters, his focus as much on keeping his internal systems running normally as on his surroundings. It made shutting down the last few systems still trying to overclock that much harder, but he wasn’t about to go grab Yellowjacket to stand guard because he couldn’t handle almost getting fired. He wasn’t even fired, there was nothing for him to be so worked up about. _And yet_.

He cycled another ventilation and tried to project a sense of calm in his field, surrounding himself with what he needed so desperately to feel. How much longer would he even be here? Probably not that long, it had been stellar cycles already and he’d never known Optronix to be a particularly patient mech. The thought should’ve calmed him, but he had to swallow a whine as the prospect of leaving revved him back up taut enough it was a fight not to tremble. What was wrong with him?! He clutched his helm and curled forward, forsaking proper guard procedure for a moment to try forcing his internal systems back to baseline.

Why was the thought of finally getting to do what he came here for making him react this way? It didn’t make any sense! He should be looking forward to getting out of here and going home, back where he could use his fire and stab anyone who annoyed him and take more jobs to scour the weak and cowardly from the kingdom. He shuttered his optics and pictured his room, dimly lit, decorated with scorch marks and trinkets filched from places he set ablaze. The tall window and wide berth and smooth polished floor- no, that was the quarters he’d been given here at the castle, entered regularly by cleaners and impossible to properly defend. He’d recharged there all of once, and only a small handful of things sat in the drawers of the dresser. Why was that place coming up when he pictured his room?

He bit back a frustrated whine, releasing his helm to knock it against the wall behind him. Okay, he could picture Deadlock’s murder instead. It wasn’t hard, he’d fantasized about it enough times early in his employment here to have the scene memorised, but instead of the relief he expected all the mental image dragged up was disgust, revulsion, and most worryingly _distress_. He was an assassin, he’d been sent here knowing he would eventually kill the prince he guarded, so why did the thought of going through with it turn his tanks? He’d snuffed plenty of sparks in his time, more than Yellowjacket no matter what the mech claimed, so why- red at the edge of his vision caught his optic, and he looked down at the paint which curled up his arm. The glyph for Devotion stared back at him, and his engine made an unhealthy noise as he let his helm fall back against the wall again.

Frag, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t kill Deadlock, and he couldn’t let Yellowjacket do it either. Or Optronix. If things went down the way he suspected they would, he would need to get Deadlock out of the kingdom when the time came to supposedly kill him. But no, Deadlock would be devastated if he lost his whole family to Rodimus’s inaction. If he was doing this, he’d have to bring Overlord as well. Which was going to complicate things, considering how it’d mean convincing Yellowjacket to give up his kill.

For the first time since his arrival at the castle, Rodimus hoped Optronix _wouldn’t_ send their updated orders as soon as possible. He needed all the time he could get to make a plan that would get him, Deadlock, and Overlord all out of the kingdom safely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Grandwitch is an OC of mine who’s Mirage’s kid sister. They don’t get along very well but Mirage will absolutely kick a mech’s denta in if they disrespect her.


	11. Chapter 11

“Quit fidgeting, you look fine.” Overlord huffed, not so much swatting Deadlock’s hand from his cape as brushing it away, much like one would a circuitfly. Deadlock pinched his brother on the inside of his elbow, one of the few places not adorned with intricate white-gold detailing or temporary gems. Overlord flicked the side of his helm proper for that, and Deadock’s hand shot up to steady his circlet. He wore it so rarely it felt like any little movement might send it slipping sideways on his helm, even though he knew it was magnetized in place and couldn’t be removed without at least two hands. And his was a simple little thing, he could only imagine what it felt like for Overlord, whose circlet looked far closer to the crowns of Vos.

“Oh gosh is that a smudge?” he asked with faux concern, and sniggered at the way his brother jumped two mechanometers in the air.

“Not funny.” Overlord huffed once he’d confirmed that his intricate detailing for the ball was not, in fact, smudged.

“I thought it was funny.” came a voice from behind them, and Deadlock turned with a smile to face his guard. A smile which promptly fell right off his face as his jaw dropped, optics widening to better take in the sight before him.

He’d never seen Rodimus clean up more than the minimum amount to be acceptable as a personal guard, but Carrier had insisted their guards look ‘suitably presentable’ for tonight and, well, the ball _was_ being held to publicly announce that Carrier was sparked again after two millennia of trying, so what he said went. Rodimus had once said that he was a rather all-or-nothing mech, and looking at him tonight Deadlock could believe that his usual appearance was the ‘nothing’ end of the spectrum.

Tonight his guard’s black plating was polished to a mirror shine. The purple parts he supposed were just as shiny, but it was hard to tell when they were so thoroughly covered in an oil-slick sort of iridescence. The purple that zig-zagged across his chest was outlined with shimmering silver, the sort that tinted purple in the right angle of light. Simple, bold designs in the same silver decorated Rodimus’s upper arms and lower legs, with more intricate work lining the edge of his spoiler. And the thing that tied it all together was the half-cape that must have been magnetised to the backs of Rodimus’s pauldrons, a shimmery black darker than his guard’s plating and edged with silver embroidery in unfamiliar glyphs.

“Wow. You look-” he caught himself before he could call Rodimus something stupid like _beautiful_, and hoped his smile hid the pause well enough as he scrambled for an appropriate word.

“You two clean up very nicely.” Overlord said, acknowledging not only Rodimus but also Yellowjacket next to him, decorated with a sparkly dark paint along what seemed like every contour of his armour and a geometric pattern on his chestplate. He had a half-cape too, blue with gold embroidery to match his armour, but Deadlock’s optics were quickly drawn back to Rodimus. Sparkling, shining Rodimus who he now noticed had painted his lips with that same iridescent shine and accented his deep red optics with sharp strokes of shimmery silver paint.

“_Very_ nicely.” Deadlock agreed at a less-than-subtle elbow jab from his brother.

“Our paints pale next to yours.” Rodimus gestured at Deadlock, at the white-gold detailing he’d sat still for hours to have painted on and the Decepticon Red paints applied to his face. He’d almost asked for black accent jewels instead of the Vosnian Blue ones carrier had given him, but Overlord would’ve never let him live it down. Not that he could really deny anymore that he had a crush on his guard when the smile Rodimus finished his compliment with was enough to make Deadlock’s fuel pump kick up two gears in his chassis. Slag, slag, how long had he been staring at Rodimus? Too long, for sure.

“I’m thirsty.” he said, turning and scanning the crowd for a waiter. The ones around his creators would have coolant and energon goodies, but he was sure the rest would have engex. This ball was meant to be a celebration, after all. Rodimus followed close at his heels, field pressed against Deadlock’s like a steadfast wall. Deadlock did his best to keep his own field open and welcoming, a perfectly practiced polite air, one that showed nothing of the way his spark leapt at something so simple as field contact. This ball was a celebratory one not a politically motivated one, so he didn’t have to stay the whole time. Just a few dances, a bit of chitchat with the nobles in attendance, and he could retire to his quarters for the night. But, on the flip side, the longer he stayed the more chances he’d have to admire Rodimus all prettied up for the occasion. And when was the next time he’d get that chance?

\---

Deadlock stumbled when the dance ended, but before he could pinwheel his arms for balance Rodimus was there holding him up. “Let’s get you a seat.” his guard said softly, and began leading Deadlock over to the edge of the ballroom where sturdy benches sat in tastefully dim niches. Rodimus’s frame was warm against his, smelling of spices and smoke and heat. It made his helm spin, but in a good way.

“You smell nice.” he murmured, and Rodimus warmed further against him.

“Wait here, Your Highness.” his guard said, guiding Deadlock down onto one of those nice benches. “I’ll fetch you some coolant.”

He was gone before Deadlock could protest, vanishing into the crowd like he wasn’t even there, and Deadlock slumped back against the wall behind him. The metal was cool on his plating, blessedly stable while the rest of the room kept swaying. He’d been able to not miss his guard on the dance floor, surrounded by other nobles with the beat of the music flowing through him, but alone on the bench he missed Rodimus terribly. It seemed like Rodimus was all he could think about lately, and his spark swelled in its casing at the memory of his guard’s smile just earlier this evening when Deadlock had complimented his detailing for the night. Radiant as Hadeen itself, those perfect lips shining around the first glyph of his response, the tip of one of his adorable pointed denta just visible. Deadlock sighed heavily and pouted out at the crowd, as though he could make Rodimus reappear just by wishing it.

“Here.”

Deadlock startled, whirling to see Rodimus stood nearby with a cube of coolant in one hand, condensation beading on the chilled container. He took the cube when it was pressed into his hand, but this time before Rodimus could step away he grabbed his guard by the wrist. “Stay.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Your Highness.” Rodimus said, and Deadlock wondered when his guard’s subglyphs for his title had gotten quite so fond.

“No, stay _here_.” he tugged, pulling Rodimus down onto the bench next to him.

“Your Highness, I should be standing guard.” Rodimus said, but there was no edge to his voice, and his red optics were soft and fond as they met Deadlock’s own. The silver which winged Rodimus’s optics sparkled blue as Deadlock leaned in, catching the light from his own optics and reflecting it back.

“You can do that later.” he murmured, sliding his hand down to rest atop Rodimus’s on the bench between them. “First, kiss me.”

“What?” Rodimus pulled back, flicking his helm to one side like he did when he reset his audials to re-process the last input. It was an unfairly adorable quirk for a mech as deadly as his guard.

“Kiss me.” he repeated for Rodimus’s benefit, making sure to enunciate this time. When Rodimus still just stared, Deadlock rolled his optics. “Rodimus, I _order_ you to kiss me.”

Rodimus had the nerve to laugh, and had they been standing Deadlock would’ve stomped his foot. As it was he settled for a pout, which faded as soon as Rodimus reached out to caress his cheek. A black thumb ran over the unpainted portion of his lips, and he leaned into Rodimus’s touch.

“Kiss me, _please_?” he asked, looking at Rodimus through half-shuttered optics.

“Absolutely not.” Rodimus smiled, soft and fond and _primus_ Deadlock couldn’t take this, his spark was going to burst in his chest from how beautiful this mech was. “You’re super overcharged.”

“Am not!” Deadlock protested, pulling away. Some of the chilled coolant sloshed over onto his hand, and he took a nano-klik to consider the cube he held, then the swaying room beyond the little niche they sat in, then the fact that he couldn’t sense Rodimus’s field despite his guard’s shoulder nearly brushing his own. “Only- I’m only a _little_ overcharged.” he held up his hand to gesture, scowled at the cube he was holding, and sloshed more coolant on the bench as he set it down quickly so he could make his point. “Like, this much.” he brought his fingers close together, valiantly ignoring Rodimus’s amused snort.

“And, I want you to kiss me.” he reached out with his now free hand and grabbed at the side of Rodimus’s helm. His guard had no finials to caress, but the way his plating shivered from the collar down when Deadlock’s fingers slid around the back curve of his silver-lined audial made Deadlock’s spark spin that much faster, fuel pump racing in his chest. Rodimus’s face was so close to his, those iridescent lips near enough Deadlock could feel the heated ex-vents passing out from between them.

“And I want you to get some recharge, my dear Deadlock.” Rodimus murmured, forehelm bumping Deadlock’s as he rose smoothly to his pedes, hand still entwined with Deadlock’s aiming to pull him up as well. “Perhaps you can ask me again in the morning.”

Deadlock beamed and let his guard help him to his pedes. The room still swayed, but it was the perfect excuse to lean on Rodimus as he led them both towards the nearest door out of the ballroom. “I think I will.” he said after the door shut behind them, leaving them alone in the slightly quieter corridor.

“Hmm?” Rodimus’s engine purred as Deadlock leaned on him a little more, guiding him towards the stairs.

“I’ll ask you again tomorrow.” he promised, and Rodimus made a small sound of understanding.

“I sure hope so.” Rodimus said, so softly Deadlock wasn’t sure he was meant to hear it. A smile split his face, and he pressed his cheek to Rodimus’s shoulder, basking in the scent of his fancy polish. Tomorrow. He’d ask Rodimus to kiss him tomorrow, and wouldn’t even have to make it an order.

He could hardly wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, I get to incorporate [the prompt](https://corvidprompts.tumblr.com/post/182963422585/) which started this whole thing!


	12. Chapter 12

Rodimus grabbed the insulation tarp folded neatly at the foot of his prince’s recharge slab, and drew it carefully up over the sleeping mech. Deadlock was already out cold, had been almost before his frame hit the berth, and Rodimus’s spark ached with an unfamiliar emotion as he looked down at the prince he’d sworn to protect with his very life if need be. It had been a lie at the time but, well, Optronix had always told him love was the worst sort of weakness. He bent to press a kiss to his prince’s forehelm, gentle enough his lip paint didn’t so much as smudge on Deadlock’s beautiful white plating, and the ache in his spark intensified as he straightened.

He didn’t know when it had started, where he’d made a wrong turn, slipped off the path to success so graciously laid out for him by Optronix, but every mega-cycle that passed he found himself caring less and less. He had Deadlock, he _loved_ Deadlock, and that was all he needed.

Rodimus removed his half-cape, folding it up tightly to tuck in his subspace with a small smile. Deadlock had looked downright _awestruck_ at the sight of him all polished and detailed. It had felt... good. Right. Having Thunderclash’s hungry gaze on his frame made him feel powerful, desirable. Deadlock’s soft blue optics and awed expression, though, made him feel... wanted. Rodimus looked back down at Deadlock, deep in recharge on the berth, handsome face slack and peaceful, and his spark casing felt far too tight. He hadn’t felt _wanted_ in what seemed like a lifetime, and of fragging course it had to be by the one mech he couldn’t have.

He was pretty sure he could get Deadlock out of the city in one piece, Overlord too if Yellowjacket would agree to let him ‘murder’ the firstforged prince, but he had no doubts that saving his prince would lose him any chance of ever being loved in return by him. It would be worth it, though. It had to be worth it, or his spark would break. He swallowed hard, shoved those thoughts aside, and went to use Deadlock’s personal washroom to scrub the detailing paint from everywhere he could reach before stepping out to stand guard.

It was nearly a cycle later that Overlord appeared, stumbling and humming to himself, one hand on the wall for balance. Yellowjacket followed bare steps behind him, herding the prince with an air of exasperation that Overlord was certainly too overcharged to read in his field. Yellowjacket emerged from Overlord’s chambers half a cycle later damp, mostly free of detailing, and carrying a pair of small mesh cleaning cloths in a bowl of solvent. Rodimus checked Deadlock over his shoulder, then moved over to where Yellowjacket was setting up on the floor.

“How overcharged was yours?” Yellowjacket asked as he handed over one of the cleaning cloths. Rodimus wrung it out as Yellowjacket turned his back to him and cast a considering optic over the remnants of Yellowjacket’s detailing.

“Overcharged enough I wanted him _re_charging before I had to deal with him any more intoxicated.”

“And yours is the same size as you.” Yellowjacket grumbled, field broadcasting his annoyance clearly. Rodimus snorted.

“At least yours wasn’t tripping you every third step.”

Yellowjacket chuckled as Rodimus brought the solvent-laden mesh up to scrub away the deep purple detailing on his back, and they lapsed into silence as Rodimus worked and Yellowjacket kept watch for both of them. Yellowjacket produced a third mesh cloth from his subspace after a klik, and Rodimus took it silently to wipe up solvent which had dripped and pooled in the crevices of Yellowjacket’s armour. It was almost calming, wiping away the evidence of the night as if it had never happened, back to normal with the barest of efforts. The thought made his spark casing clench uncomfortably though, remembering Deadlock’s overcharged promise to ask him for a kiss tomorrow. Tomorrow when he’d be just plain old Rodimus again, no cape or fancy paints to catch his prince’s optic.

“Done.” he said softly, lifting the cleaning cloth and hanging it on the edge of the bowl.

“Alright, your turn.” Yellowjacket said, turning to face him.

“Yeah, yeah.” Rodimus huffed, shifting his weight so he could spin around without having to rise. “Just be careful with the spoiler.”

“I always am.” Yellowjacket scoffed, and Rodimus’s optics wandered to where Deadlock laid on his berth. Deep in peaceful recharge, right where Rodimus had left him. Overlord, too, laid prone on his berth, though he had a leg hanging off the side. All was quiet, serene even, as things tended to be in the Decepticon castle. The silence hung over them unbroken until halfway through wiping Rodimus’s spoiler clean, when Yellowjacket lifted the mesh cloth and sucked in a sharp vent. His field flared, shock setting Rodimus on edge as it washed over him, but when he spoke a few nano-kliks later his voice was level.

“I got a comm.” he said conversationally as he set back to scrubbing, and Rodimus accepted the request to initiate their private comm link. ::It’s from Optronix.::

Rodimus was very, very glad that he had his field furled tight already because otherwise there was no way Yellowjacket wouldn’t’ve felt the icy dread that washed through it. “What’s it about?” he asked as the comm link went quiet.

“Oh, just that thing were were talking about a while back.” Yellowjacket went back to cleaning Rodimus’s spoiler, sounding casual as ever. “It’s happening a stellar cycle from now.”

“To the mega-cycle?”

“I’ll comm you the date later.” Yellowjacket promised, and Rodimus pulled his field even tighter to his plating. Frag, he couldn’t just take this news silently, Yellowjacket would know something was up and then- he forcibly halted that processor thread, diverting the processing power to figuring out a natural-seeming response to this news.

“Finally.” he chuckled, the sub-glyphs of excitement and eagerness bitter on his glossa. If the irritated flick of Yellowjacket’s field against his was any indication though, it was believable enough.

“Don’t go getting too eager, now.” Yellowjacket warned. “This isn’t something we want done early.” ::Especially since Optronix will be coming by to finish the other half of the job himself.::

_Frag_.

“So did the plans change?”

“Not for us.” Yellowjacket shrugged, moving from Rodimus’s spoiler to the backs of his shoulders. ::We didn’t get the full brief before. The job is for the whole royal family.::

“Alright.” Rodimus nodded. ::Makes sense, Optronix has always been obsessed with the King.::

“You’re clean.” Yellowjacket said after another klik, and Rodimus stretched as he stood.

“Thanks.” he ran through the short list of workable counter-plans he’d come up with, grimacing as he had to strike almost all of them from the list. Optronix being present made things a lot more complicated, but also much more simple if he played it right. ::What if we changed the plan ourselves, though?:: he asked as he headed back to his post outside Deadlock’s door. Having his Prince nearby was calming, in a way, but he couldn’t let himself relax. Not now, not when everything hinged on the outcome of this conversation.

::Optronix would kill us.:: Yellowjacket fired back immediately, not even looking at Rodimus as he gathered up the mesh cloths and bowl of dirty solvent.

::Not if we kill him first.:: Rodimus sent, and stilled his vents as Yellowjacket tensed for a couple of nano-kliks that seemed to stretch on forever.

::We would be executed as traitors as soon as we got home.:: Yellowjacket replied, and Rodimus nearly grinned as Yellowjacket disappeared into Overlord’s chambers..

::Not if we get the King to strike the killing blow. Think about it, what better chance will you get to take his place?::

::What are you suggesting, Rodimus?::

::I’m suggesting, we do our jobs, get Optronix killed doing his, then finish the King off and take credit.::

::And you’d let me take leadership of the Autobots?:: Yellowjacket gave him a disbelieving look as he came back out into the hall.

::Oh I’ll challenge you for it later, promise.:: Rodimus smirked. ::But if I took the lead everyone would know I planned it. If you take it, we can pretend it was an actual accident.::

::This is unusually thorough, for you. How long have you been planning this?::

::Bold of you to assume I wasn’t planning it from the start.:: Rodimus settled back against the wall next to Deadlock’s door, soothing some small measure of stress by pulling his prince’s vitals up in the corner of his HUD.

::Then what’s your plan for dealing with the King’s conjunx?:: Yellowjacket’s subglyphs were sharp, probing, distrustful. Rodimus would’ve flinched if he had any less training. ::The order was for the whole family.::

Aaand the King-Consort was carrying, which meant if he was allowed to live there would be an heir. Frag, Rodimus hadn’t updated his plans yet to account for that. ::We’ll handle him when we get to it.:: he made his subglyphs flippant and dismissive, and created an alert to remind himself to update the plan accordingly next time he had a chance. ::So, are we agreed?::

::Ye- wait.:: Yellowjacket frowned at him, optics narrowed suspiciously. ::How do I know you won’t just take the throne for yourself as soon as you get me in command of the Autobots?::

::And here I thought you were smart.:: Rodimus rolled his optics. ::Whoever’s paying us will be taking the throne, obviously.::

::Oh, right.::

::So, we good to go on the new plan?::

::Yeah.:: Yellowjacket inclined his helm ever so slightly, keeping optic contact with Rodimus as he did so. ::Kill the Princes, kill Optronix, kill the Kings.::

::Walk away richer than Primus.:: Rodimus grinned, and shut the comm link before Yellowjacket could reply. If nothing else, having Optronix offline would make it about a million times easier to _stay_ alive once he got Deadlock out of here. Now he just had to figure out how to save his prince’s brother and carrier while he was at it.

No pressure or anything.


	13. Chapter 13

Deadlock shifted his weight slightly, doing his best to filter out the tension in Rodimus’s field as he greeted another member of the Tethrian delegation. Normally he wouldn’t complain about having two balls within a stellar cycle of each other, but normally he wasn’t the one stuck making semi-political small talk with visiting nobles and diplomats and other assorted dignitaries all night. Carrier had been insistent though, so here he was, standing next to Overlord and trying to remember which names and titles went to which faces. Thankfully none of them actually seemed to want to talk to him or Overlord, gravitating towards Carrier where he sat with Sire. Presumably to congratulate him and wish him luck in his carriage, which was starting to show in a tilt of his cockpit and swell of his abdominal plating.

The last of the Tethrians gave Overlord a polite bow, and as he hurried off to where his fellow diplomats were crowded around Carrier Deadlock rolled his optics. “I don’t see how we’re supposed to get any real practice out of this.”

“Speak for yourself.” Overlord smirked at him. “I got to actually greet people this time, instead of just making small talk after Sire and Carrier did the welcoming.”

“Yeah, and you only forgot two of their names.”

“You say that like you even _knew_ half their names before I said them.”

“I’m not the future King.” Deadlock waved a hand dismissively, and Overlord’s knuckles bumped his shoulder.

“Wanna get some fresh air while everyone’s distracted congratulating Carrier?” he asked.

“_Please_.” Deadlock nodded, already glancing about for his guard. Neither Rodimus nor Yellowjacket was where he’d expected them to be, standing attentively at the edge of the room, but he didn’t have to look far to find them. They were talking with one of the Tethrian delegation, minister of foreign affairs or something? Deadlock knew he’d greeted the mech but he’d been a bit distracted by the distinctly un-Tethrian garishness of his paintjob and not really processed anything the boat said, though he recalled the mech’s Tarnish had been perfectly smooth.

At a second glance Rodimus seemed to be mostly watching while Yellowjacket spoke with the Tethrian, and as Deadlock watched his guard ducked his helm slightly in a laugh which was inaudible from this distance. It was nice, watching the two guards acting normally again. Ever since the party where Carrier announced he was sparked again there had been a strange tension between them. As if sensing Deadlock’s optics on him, Rodimus turned his helm to look over at the two of them. Deadlock raised his hand to beckon his guard, and with one last gesture that Deadlock couldn’t recognise as anything but vaguely threatening Yellowjacket crossed the room along with Rodimus.

“We’re going out to the gardens.” Overlord said as soon as the two guards were near enough to speak to without raising his voice. Yellowjacket nodded, and as they slipped out the door that opened onto the castle grounds Deadlock turned to look at Rodimus.

“So what was that with the Tethrian mech?” he asked, and Rodimus smirked.

“Riptide’s an old...” he paused, tapping his chin as he looked for a word. “Acquaintance. We lost touch vorns ago.”

“Riptide?” Deadlock raised an optic ridge at the distinctly Tarnish glyphs Rodimus used for the name. He’d have to find Riptide once they were back inside, figure out some way to smalltalk his way into asking how a Tarnish mech wound up in the Tethrian government.

“Not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he’s competent enough.” Rodimus shrugged. Deadlock nodded shallowly and stepped quickly to walk next to his brother. Away from the party, he could feel the tension in the two guards’ fields again, and it unnerved him more than he cared to admit.

“We shouldn’t stay out too long.” he reminded his brother, watching the way Overlord tilted his helm back to observe what stars were visible in the heart of their kingdom’s capital. “Carrier may be busy preening at all the attention, but Sire will notice.”

“We have some time.” Overlord retorted, stretching leisurely and lowering his gaze to the gardens themselves. Luminescent groundcover grew in the substrate around the lovingly sculpted crystals, and the oil stream glowed a multitude of colours as the various solar stones in the bottom slowly released all the light they’d soaked up over the course of the mega-cycle. It was beautiful.

Deadlock was halfway through making a note to visit the gardens at night more often when a wordless shout rang out from behind him, followed closely by the clang of armour on derma. He spun around, Overlord doing the same at his side, and his jaw dropped at the sight that greeted him. Yellowjacket on the ground, kicking Rodimus’s pedes out from under him with a savage noise.

“Like frag you will!” the smaller guard yelled, spinning up onto his knees and launching himself on top of Rodimus, fist drawn back. “He’s mine!”

Deadlock stepped forward first, reaching out to stop Yellowjacket, but Overlord’s longer legs brought him closer to the now fully brawling guards.

“Stay back!” Rodimus shouted, his voice overlapping with Yellowjacket’s and their sub-glyphs merging into one big mess of _concern stubbornness fear protection denial_. Rodimus managed to kick Yellowjacket off himself, backing up a few steps towards Deadlock as his forearm partially transformed to bring out a _buzzsaw_. Who the frag got a buzzsaw mounted to their arm?!

Yellowjacket staggered to his pedes as well, pulling a gun from his subspace that Deadlock had no doubt did far more than just stun. He glanced at Overlord, just the briefest fraction of a nano-klik of optic contact, and they moved as one. Overlord launched himself forward faster, his long legs eating up what little distance there was between himself and Yellowjacket as Deadlock caught Rodimus under the arms and forced them up and out. Rodimus cursed and stomped on his pede, but Deadlock just gritted his denta as he held on tighter.

“Calm- _down_.” he grunted, servos straining as Rodimus thrashed in his hold, spewing profanity. Just a few paces away, Overlord seemed to be trying the same thing with his own guard, though Deadlock couldn’t say if it was doing any good.

“I will not calm down!” Rodimus shouted, struggling harder. Deadlock adjusted his grip, and staggered when his guard’s flailing caught him square on the audial. He managed to grab the stem of the arm-mounted buzzsaw as Rodimus slipped his hold, but a sound of wrenching, tearing metal filled his audials and he was left holding a broken-off buzzsaw with a ragged, fuel-stained end.

The two guards were back at each other's intakes, screaming profanities at such a volume Deadlock wondered why nobody else had come to investigate yet. "Rodimus, stop it!" Deadlock shouted as Overlord grabbed Yellowjacket by the arm.

"No!" Rodimus shouted right back, a dagger glowing in his hand. "Not while this _Autobot_ is walking free!"

"That's rich, coming from you." Yellowjacket spat, twisting his arm so Overlord was forced to release him. And just like that they were back at it, fighting just as fiercely as they did in training but this time with actual intent. "You're just here to kill them both!" Yellowjacket landed a punch in the middle of Rodimus's chestplate, denting the metal and making him stagger back. Deadlock moved to restrain his guard again, but froze when he heard his own designation from Rodimus's vocaliser.

"As if I'd let you kill Deadlock!" he slashed a wide arc with his dagger, the air around him shimmering, and Deadlock shook himself.

"That's **enough**!" Overlord yelled this time lifting Yellowjacket clear off the ground. Deadlock darted forward and grabbed Rodimus by the arms, hissing at the heat of his guard's plating. Rodimus turned at the first pull on his arms, and Deadlock grabbed him by the shoulders.

"What was that about _killing me_?" he asked, underlying his main glyphs with ones that invoked his rank and authority.

"Yellowjacket is an Autobot assassin." Rodimus lifted his chin, ember-red optics meeting Deadlock's without flinching. "He was sent to murder you and Overlord both."

"That's rich, coming from the mech who was just trying to get me to let him slag both of you in your berths." Yellowjacket snarled, and Rodimus pulled easily from Deadlock's slackened grip to face the supposed Autobot.

"And what else was I supposed to do, let you murder my charge? Murder his brother?"

"You were trying to protect us." Overlord said, his face doing that stupid thing it did when he'd solved a puzzle.

"Obviously." Yellowjacket scoffed.  
"Well yeah!" Rodimus exclaimed at the same time, and Deadlock saw the moment the two realized they'd been fighting over nothing. Rodimus's field flared against his, shock and relief so strong Deadlock felt his struts going weak in automatic empathy.

"Why would either of you think the other was an assassin, though?" Deadlock frowned, looking from Rodimus to Yellowjacket. "Let alone an _Autobot_ assassin."

Rodimus laughed, but his field held no joy where it pressed tight against Deadlock's, only a poorly-smothered sense of fear and desperation. He went lax in Deadlock's hold, slumping against his frame. "The red eyes and purple decals didn't give it away?" he asked dryly, and Deadlock could only stare as his guard's fingers hooked under a thin piece of metal which had sheared up from the rest of his chestplate at Yellowjacket's punch. Rodimus pulled, and the metal peeled away with a horrifyingly familiar insignia rising from it in the center. His optics flicked to Yellowjacket, who had been set down on the ground and now was peeling a matching patch from his shoulder to reveal the angular purple brand given to all mechs in the continent's most feared criminal organisation.

Deadlock could only stare in mute horror, his processor struggling to rectify everything he knew of Rodimus with everything he knew of Autobots. Because with the face of Primus leering at him from his guard's chest, painted the same lurid purple as the decoration which spanned the thick black plating, there was nothing else his guard could be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since it'll never come up again: Yellowjacket was chewing Riptide out for ghostiing and letting the Autobots assume he died on his last job, which was to infiltrate the Tethrian government and murder someone important. He decided he liked it better there than in Kaon though, and somehow in the interim bumbled his way into a government job himself. Again, concept and name of Tethrius by [Droid](http://hypotheticalandroid.tumblr.com).
> 
> And Noël, congrats on your _incredibly accurate_ read of Bee's mood last chapter.


	14. Chapter 14

Rodimus pulled away from Deadlock as gently as he could, spark aching as his prince's hands fell away without resistance. The weight in his chest only grew heavier as he pressed the cover-up patch back in place, absently warming the deformed corner to mould it back against his armour. A few paces away, Yellowjacket was doing the same with the patch on his shoulder, and if Rodimus had to guess he'd say Deadlock's face was probably not that different from Overlord's right now, a mask of distraught betrayal. He couldn't bring himself to check.

"Is your charge really _that_ stupid, Roddy?" Yellowjacket asked, and Rodimus bristled. He wasn't sure if he was more angry at the implied slight against his ability to keep a deep cover intact, or the blatant doubt of his prince's intelligence. Either way, this called for retribution.

"Yours didn't figure it out either, _Bee_." he snarled, stepping forward and raising a fist.

“Bee?” Overlord whispered, and Rodimus smirked. He was gonna get so much slag for telling Overlord about Yellowjacket’s old nickname, but there was no way Deadlock wasn’t going to try to call him _Roddy_ as soon as they were alone so really it was perfectly fair.

“Oh, go ahead.” Yellowjacket laughed, sharp and cruel on the surface but lacking and real edge. If Rodimus threw the first punch, he knew they’d fight to a draw like they always had. “You could never beat me in a straight fight.”

“You say that like you weren’t stacking the odds in your favour.” Rodimus bit back, gauging the distance between them. Two steps should be enough of a running start to tackle Yellowjacket.

“Go ahead.” Yellowjacket repeated, stepping forwards and flaring his plating in a blatant invitation to fight. “No machinations, no tools, just the weapons Primus gave us.”

“No stinger for you, then.” Rodimus teased, and Yellowjacket bristled like a drenched photovoltaic cat, fists clenching tighter. Even after all this time he was still jealous. If nothing else, his fire was worth it for that alone.

“Bee, please.” Overlord said softly, laying a hand on Yellowjacket’s unbranded shoulder.

Yellowjacket shrugged the touch off, face practically glowing when Rodimus checked his thermal overlay, and straightened up into a very formal posture. “Rodimus and I will tell you the full story later.” he said, field thin and straining as it pulsed with sincerity. “It was risky enough to reveal ourselves out in the open like this.”

“Yeah, let’s talk about this somewhere private.” Rodimus agreed with a nod, grateful for the excuse to drop the subject for a while. “But first, isn’t there a party you two should be getting back to?” he inclined his helm towards the open doors which led back into the ballroom, warm light and lively instrumental music pouring out into the edges of the garden.

Deadlock grimaced, and Rodimus tamped down the fond smile which threatened at the edges of his lips. Thankfully Deadlock and Overlord were fairly easy to herd back inside, but as soon as they passed through the doors Rodimus became hyper-aware of every dent and scuff on his plating. He and Yellowjacket weren’t covered in detailing like they’d been for the last ball, it wasn’t necessary when they were supposed to stand at the edges and look professional instead of tailing their charges through the crowd, but he’d still put on his nice polish for tonight and now it was all fragged up.

How visible was it that he and Yellowjacket had just gotten in a fight? How many of the party-going nobles were looking at him out of the corners of their optics and whispering to each other about him? How likely was it that Deadlock’s reputation would be impacted by his guard’s sloppy appearance? How badly would his prince’s creators punish him, or worse, punish _Deadlock_?

Rodimus lifted a hand to furtively, futilely, try to smooth what was left of his polish out over the scuffs and scrapes. His spark casing felt too tight, spark spinning faster and faster in his chest as his processor churned through potential outcomes of tonight’s events. Best case scenario he and Yellowjacket were quietly fired, Deadlock and Overlord got new guards, and he spent the next few vorns paying for fragging up such an important job. Optronix wouldn’t slag him, he was too good at his job for that, Optronix had put too much time into grooming him as a potential successor. He could make Rodimus’s life like living in the Pit though, strip out what little joy there was, grind down the parts of Rodimus’s personality he’d always hated so much.

But at least in that outcome, Rodimus and possibly Yellowjacket were the only ones who suffered. The _worst_ case scenario... well, it was hard to isolate one when every possible outcome seemed worse than the last, but so far the most awful end state his processor had churned out involved himself and Yellowjacket being imprisoned by the Autobots, held captive and interrogated, then freed when Optronix stormed the castle and made to kill their princes. Or watch their princes be killed, it was hard to tell which one would hurt more when both made him feel like his spark was splintering under the strain.

No matter what though, there were two constants to the outcomes. He and Yellowjacket would be dismissed as guards, and they would be _punished_. Optronix, he could handle. He’d borne the brunt of the mech’s rage and disappointment for most of his functioning, had clawed his way to his current standing in an attempt to be free of that crimson gaze that bored into his very spark and always, _always_ found him wanting no matter how hard he tried. He couldn’t even imagine the looks Deadlock and Overlord would wear when he and Yellowjacket told them the truth, as they would surely be ordered to do. He could imagine perfectly how Deadlock’s field would feel though. Those wonderfully expressive projections thick and bitter with fear, anger, disgust...

A sharp slap of admonishment against his field shocked Rodimus from his thoughts, and he looked over to see Yellowjacket frowning at him. Another brush of admonishment and warning, and Rodimus only tensed for a fraction of a nano-klik when Yellowjacket grabbed his wrist. The grip was gentle, deceptively so. Rodimus knew Yellowjacket wouldn’t be easily shaken off, and was silently grateful for the stubbornness. He cycled a steadying vent, gritted his denta, and began purging processor threads. His fingers twitched with each one he killed off, and if he went more than a few nano-kliks without deleting a thread Yellowjacket’s hand tightened on his wrist, pulling him out of whichever thread had sucked him in.

It took several kliks, but eventually he was able to pull his arm free without feeling like he was going to get dragged under inside his own processor. His spark still spun too fast in a casing that felt too tight, his plating tingling as it flared out and pulled back in repeatedly. Yellowjacket’s field stayed pressed against his own, sharp and grounding, until Rodimus mastered himself enough to push back gratitude and reign in the mess of his own field. He opened the comm link between them, and as soon as Yellowjacket’s end opened he sent a quick message. ::This doesn’t count towards our favours balance.::

::Of course not.:: Yellowjacket nodded shallowly and patted Rodimus’s shoulder. ::It never does.::

\---

Rodimus tried to stay attentive and on-guard, but even after he killed his spiralling processor threads it took almost half a cycle for his frame to get the memo and calm the frag down, which left him exhausted. He managed not to visibly droop, but his processor kept wandering to thoughts of recharge. A warm berth, piles of insulation tarps, frames pressed against his own... he shook his helm as his processor automatically filled in the anonymous berthmates as Yellowjacket and Deadlock. Deadlock was his charge, and Yellowjacket... well for one thing he wouldn’t trust Yellowjacket not to stab him while his guard was down, and for another their relationship was purely professional. Everything they did for each other outside of jobs was done within a carefully balanced network of favours.

Well, almost everything, but keeping each other stable was basically a work thing. He was downright useless when his processor decided to skew every outcome catastrophic and send him spiralling, and Yellowjacket was worse than useless when he started overthinking everything and seeing threats where none existed. When the options were to learn how to handle each other or fail at their jobs, well, it wasn’t really worth factoring into their favours owed.

“Here.” Yellowjacket shoved a half-sized cube in his hands, and Rodimus blinked at it before turning his stare on Yellowjacket. “Enerspresso.” Yellowjacket explained. “You’re running on static about now, right?”

“More or less.” Rodimus drank the fuel like a shot, and his plating rippled helm to pede as it hit his tank. “That wasn’t straight enerspresso.”

“Would I ever give you straight enerspresso?” Yellowjacket smirked. “Consider it payback for giving Overlord my old nickname.”

“Hey, you started it.” Rodimus elbowed Yellowjacket in the side.

“That’s your opinion.” Yellowjacket lifted a cube from the tray of a passing waiter drone, and Rodimus set his empty one down in its spot. “I added some pentane to the enerspresso, by the way.”

Rodimus bit back a groan. Straight trimethylpentane burnt up too fast with the temperature he ran at, which meant he’d have to keep drinking enerspresso to ward off the crash until he got time to recharge. “Aft.” he muttered, and Yellowjacket smirked.

The rest of the party passed by in fits and starts, alternating between kliks that felt like eternities and cycles that passed in the blink of an optic. The Kings left early, Starscream pleading exhaustion due to the forging and Megatron escorting him out like a dutiful and attentive conjunx. He wondered if Deadlock would be so attentive to his future conjunx, then quickly shook himself, dismissing the thread from his processor. He had no business speculating on that, it was completely irrelevant to both his immediate duties and the interrogation he and Yellowjacket would surely be subjected to tonight. Or more likely tomorrow morning, seeing as how the Kings had already retired for the night.

The speculative thread wasn’t so easily dismissed though, and Rodimus found himself drifting back to it again and again. Deadlock would be a good creator, he was certain. An attentive sire or doting carrier, perhaps both in his lifetime. His creations would be loved, privileged, they would never know the pain of an empty tank or have to fear not waking in the morning when they went to recharge. His spark wrenched in its casing as he forcibly terminated attempts to call on some of his oldest memories. He didn’t need to relive those again, frag you very much. Nor did he need to go over his scant few memories of his carrier again, worn and painful-comforting as they were they inevitably led to his _final_ memory of his carrier, and everything which came after.

Eventually, finally, Overlord was able to extricate himself from the chattering nobles with Deadlock at his side. Rodimus fell in step behind the Princes as they left the room, and let motor memory take him through the halls to the princes’ chambers. He stopped in front of Deadlock’s door, but Deadlock continued at Overlord’s side so he stepped quickly to catch up.

Overlord opened the door, and Rodimus hesitated outside after the princes had entered. Only for a nano-klik though, because any weakness he showed now would certainly be used against him, and if Deadlock was even half as smart as Rodimus knew him to be he would know just how easily Rodimus would bend to his will.

“Please, sit.” Overlord said, gesturing to the small couch arranged opposite the chairs he and Deadlock had seated themselves in, a low table set in between.

It wasn’t quite big enough for them to have personal space, and Rodimus wasn’t sure if it was comforting or concerning that Yellowjacket’s field was tinged with uncertainty.

“Remove your brand covers.” Overlord said, and Rodimus forced his ventilations to remain steady. No turning back now.


	15. Chapter 15

Deadlock’s spark ached at the resigned expression on Rodimus’s face as his guard peeled the patch off the center of his chestplate. Up close, in the light of Overlord’s chambers, it was unmistakably the Autobot brand. Which he supposed answered why Rodimus had avoided speaking of his home life. It could only be painful for a mech as kind as Rodimus to live amongst cold-sparked killers.

“How long?” he asked, and got two confused red stares. “How long have you two been Autobots.” he clarified, and the guards looked at each other.

“Two thousand meta-cycles?” Yellowjacket hedged, sounding uncertain.

“Twenty four vorns, or thereabouts.” Rodimus agreed with a small nod.

“The Autobots recruit _sparklings_?” Overlord asked, just as aghast as Deadlock.

“Primus, no.” Yellowjacket shook his helm. “You have to be old enough to earn your fuel.”

“Unless you’re sparked into it, like Ozzy.” Rodimus crossed his arms over his abdomen. “We weren’t sparklings but we were pretty young.”

“We wouldn’t’ve made it past ten vorns without-” Yellowjacket stopped mid-sentence, optics skittering sideways as his plating clamped down tight to his frame.

“Without Optronix of Iacon.” Rodimus finished, and Deadlock sucked in a sharp ventilation. “He picked us up off the streets, taught us how to fight. We owe him... everything, basically.” Rodimus bowed his helm, shoulders slumping, and Deadlock wished Overlord’s couch was big enough for him to cram on it too and give his guard a hug. No wonder Rodimus was afraid of his caretaker, the mech was infamous, a price on his helm in every kingdom on this continent. Brutal too, if the stories were anything close to true, and Deadlock had the feeling they were.

“Did you two take this job with the intent of assassinating us?” Overlord asked, his voice grave. If they said yes... no force in the Well or Cybertron would save them from Carrier and Sire's wrath.

The guards looked at each other, Rodimus grimacing in a way that made Deadlock worry for his guard's continued functioning, then Yellowjacket sighed heavily. "We knew it was a possibility that Optronix would change our jobs mid-assignment."

"I know I contemplated murder more than once as a way to get out of being your guard." Rodimus shrugged. Yellowjacket smacked him upside the helm without even looking. "Oh like you didn't do the same."

"I made contingency plans for possible changes to mission parameters." Yellowjacket said stiffly, optics locked on Overlord's, pleading for understanding. "We only got told to change jobs a few deca-cycles ago, and from the nano-klik I got that message I have been trying to conceive of a plan that will keep you and Deadlock both alive."

"Slacker." Rodimus smirked, elbowing Yellowjacket just under his breastplate. "I had my first contingency plans before you got his overcharged aft back from the party."

Deadlock wasn't sure if he should feel flattered or not. On one hand, Rodimus cared about him enough to plan to defy the continent's most feared criminal. On the other, he'd hit that threshold less than a stellar cycle ago.

"Your contingency plan was to pit Optronix and King Megatron against each other and finish off the victor after the fact." Yellowjacket deadpanned, giving Rodimus a flat stare.

"It's a good plan!"

"Carrier is sparked." Deadlock said, drawing both guards' attention. "We can't risk Optronix seriously injuring Sire, or our little siblings could suffer for it."

"Damn." Rodimus scowled, bringing a hand up to his chin.

"We can work out a plan together." Overlord said confidently, leaning forward to rest a hand on the low table between them and their guards. "But one thing I can promise right now." Deadlock watched his brother make eye contact with each guard, holding it for a nano-klik or two. "No matter what happens after this, neither of you will be forced to return to the Autobots. If you wish to stay, I will vouch for you to be trained as a castle guard. If you wish to leave, I will personally ensure you have all the papers you need to go wherever you desire."

"Overlord, you can't-"

"If Sire survives, my word that they helped will be enough." his brother said, voice low and serious. "If Sire does not survive, I will be King, and my word will be law." his optics burnt bright as he turned to look at Deadlock, field tight and impeccably controlled. "Tell me again what I cannot do."

"You can't stop Optronix." Rodimus said, and Yellowjacket jabbed him in the side. "He plans to come to the castle himself and slaughter your creators in person."

"Rodimus!" Yellowjacket hissed, and Deadlock wished he knew what his guard was planning so he could back the mech up

"The two of us together have never been able to beat him, and their training is _useless_ in a real fight, he would tear them apart." Rodimus shot to his pedes and began to pace, plating flaring and clamping back down in agitation. "Optronix would tear through the castle guards like cheap foil, no matter how many we threw at him, and the only weapons in the castle strong enough to _stop him_ are locked behind a direct order from the King. This is not a fight we can win."

"Then we run." Deadlock stood as well, intercepting Rodimus at the end of the table. "Tell Soundwave you two got wind of this through your mercenary connections and get him to send us all out of town for as long as it takes the police to catch him."

"That's not a half bad plan." Yellowjacket mused, but Rodimus shook his helm.

"You don't know Optronix. The mech is relentless, he's been obsessed with your sire longer than any of us have been functioning. Probably longer than all our lives to date put together. He will not stop until all of you are dead." Rodimus's crimson optics bored into his, coolant and cleanser making the lower rims shine brighter than the rest. "He would force me to kill you."

"He won't have the chance." Overlord promised, field firm and confident. The same front his brother wore during difficult tests and games of strategy, when he didn't want anyone to know how unsure he was. "We have how long until his arrival?" he asked Yellowjacket, inclining his helm expectantly.

"One deca-cycle."

"Nine mega-cycles, technically." Rodimus chimed in. "It's tomorrow already."

"Alright. Then counting today, we have seven mega-cycles to work out a plan. Between the four of us, we should- no, we _will_ be able to formulate a plan where nobody has to die." Overlord used his most confident and inspiring sub-glyphs, filled his field with bravado, and Deadlock almost bought that his brother believed his own words.

"Optronix has to die." Yellowjacket said, his voice low and... not quite cold but rather utterly lacking any emotional sub-glyphs. "Force Rodimus to do it, force me to do it, have him tried and executed for attempted regicide, just make sure his spark is shattered and his frame smelted down to slag." Yellowjacket was trembling by the end, and even without tone or sub-glyphs Deadlock could tell the guard was afraid.

"That seems excessive." Overlord said, and Deadlock shot his brother a glare.

“You don’t know Optronix.” Yellowjacket shook his helm. “I’ve seen that mech come back from things that would’ve killed anyone else. Things that _did_ kill others.”

“Alright.” Deadlock said solemnly, looking from Yellowjacket to Overlord and finally settling his optics on Rodimus’s. “You’re the experts here.”

Rodimus smiled, and Deadlock’s spark ached. One more deca-cycle, and Rodimus would be able to talk to him without fear of retribution from the continent’s most terrifying criminal.


	16. Chapter 16

Rodimus took a steadying vent, shuttering his optics to center himself as he ran over the plan in his processor for what must’ve been the millionth time. He and Yellowjacket just had to stick to the script, and everything would run smoothly. He had to believe that, or he’d get stuck in a spiralling processor thread _again_. His hands were still shaking from the last one, his spark heavy in its casing, internal mechanisms feeling by turns slow and heavy from the exhaustion of three attacks in a mega-cycle and hypercharged from the shot of straight pentane Yellowjacket had given him after the third.

The gate before them swung open, and Rodimus curled his hands into fists at his sides, schooling his expression into what he hoped was boredom. Optronix strode through, crimson optics like chips of pitfire above his scarred battle mask, and Rodimus’s knees nearly buckled at the sudden lash of a cold, sharp field against his own. It burnt like liquid nitrogen, like ice under his plating, like fuel coming back up half processed. “You’ve grown soft.”

Optronix’s voice was deep, menacing, as was only appropriate for the leader of the Autobots. Rodimus locked down his joints so he wouldn’t tremble as that cruel field cut through his own again, Optronix’s gaze shifting off of him and onto Yellowjacket. “Both of you.” he mused, and when his field pulled back Yellowjacket swayed dangerously. Rodimus knew better than to reach out and steady him with Optronix watching.

“You’ve completed your jobs?” Optronix asked, and Rodimus presented his blade. Its edge shone dark with partially processed energon, drawn from the underside of Deadlock’s wrist.

“No fire?” Optronix asked, and Rodimus vented deep again.

“I didn’t want to risk scaring off the Kings.” he lied through his denta, pulling up a smile. “Wouldn’t be much of an event without the main attraction, right?”

“Good.” Optronix didn’t do anything like clap a hand on Rodimus’s shoulder, or stroke down the center crest of his helm, but the simple sub-glyph of approval was more than enough to set Rodimus’s systems thrumming. Optronix was abhorrent, downright evil, but still Rodimus nearly vibrated at the scrap of praise he’d been given as Optronix inspected and approved of Yellowjacket’s blade, which thankfully also passed muster.

“Now, where can I find Megatron?” Optronix stood tall, and Rodimus shared a look with Yellowjacket.

“The throne room.” they said in synch. One of the princes would’ve commed if their sire had left.

“Excellent.” Optronix’s field prickled like needles of ice against Rodimus’s plating, a cruel glee and sickening anticipation so thick and heavy Rodimus could’ve choked on it. He kept his own field furled tight, stripped down to only the most basic of signals that even Optronix wouldn’t be able to glean the truth from. “You two did a commendable job handling the guards.”

The praise was so unexpected Rodimus nearly missed a step, optics cycling wide as Optronix strode between him and Yellowjacket towards the castle doors. Yellowjacket grimaced once Optronix passed, and Rodimus nodded. It was strange, how just a few stellar cycles had taken something he once craved above all else and made it a thing to be reviled. He didn’t want Optronix’s approval, didn’t want the scraps of validation and affection he’d fought so fiercely for even just a meta-cycle ago. Was this what love did, turn you against everything you were raised with? He couldn’t fathom doing this for anyone but Deadlock.

Optronix led the way to the throne room, throwing open both doors as he strode through them, and Rodimus’s processor screeched to a halt. He froze outside the door, suddenly incredibly glad that Optronix was between him and the throne because King Megatron wasn’t as alone as he and Yellowjacket had planned. From the sound of it, King Starscream was present as well. And they were fragging. Rodimus grimaced, glanced at Yellowjacket to see a similar expression, and gritted his denta. Nothing they could do about it now, they’d just have to revise the plan as they went.

He palmed the patch back onto the center of his chestplate, covering up the brand there with smooth black, and with a nod to Yellowjacket split off to circle around the edge of the room. The kings were thankfully no longer actively fragging, Megatron on his pedes between Optronix and his carrying conjunx, but Rodimus still felt his cheeks burn looking in their direction. He suddenly felt bad for Deadlock, who’d agreed to wait outside the room as backup and had probably heard his creators going at it. That couldn’t’ve been fun.

“I wondered if I would ever get to see him in person.” Optronix said, his tone far too conversational for the situation at hand. “He’s just as weak and frail as the rumours say.”

“_He_ is right here.” King Starscream scowled, rising from his conjunx’s throne with more grace than Rodimus would’ve expected of a mech who from the sound of it had been getting his processor fragged out not two klilks ago. “And I’m not weak, or helpless.” he raised an arm, and Rodimus nearly did a double take as King Starscream’s forearm armour transformed aside for a blaster Rodimus couldn’t identify. Vosnian weaponry? He’d thought their military strength was restricted to alt-modes. Evidently he’d thought wrong.

“I see why you liked him, Megs.” Optronix purred, walking closer. “You always did have a thing for mechs below your station.”

“Starscream is my equal.” King Megatron growled, shifting to stand between Optronix and his conjunx.

“He is not fit to carry your heirs.” Optronix snarled, and Rodimus got the disorienting feeling he was listening to half a conversation, that Optronix and the King had enough of a history to layer their glyphs with secondary and tertiary meanings inscrutable to outsiders.

“Oh get over it.” King Starscream snapped, and King Megatron held a hand out behind himself to stop his conjunx advancing to his side.

“Your quarrel is with me.” King Megatron said firmly, gesturing vaguely at his conjunx. From the sour look that crossed King Starscream’s face, Rodimus would’ve bet King Megatron was trying to get his conjunx to leave. Which wasn’t a bad idea, actually.

“You’re right, old friend.” Optronix purred, hooking a finger under King Megatron’s chin and leaning in far too close, until they were close enough their noses nearly touched, until Optronix’s battle mask was pressed against King Megatron’s helm where an audial flare would normally go.

Whatever Optronix said, he said it too softly for Rodimus to hear. King Megatron clearly heard and understood it though, because the king pulled back with a roar of pure rage and punched Optronix in the side, hard enough Rodimus heard metal crunch as it crumpled and Optronix’s vocaliser spat static for a nano-klik. Optronix staggered back a step and King Megatron reached back, grabbing the ceremonial knighting sword from its stand between the two thrones. Well, if nothing else it would buy a little time.

And then Megatron swung the blade clean through the join where Optronix’s pauldron and smokestack met, sending the shiny silver kibble clattering to the floor. Okay, not a ceremonial sword after all, _plus_ the King knew how to use it. Aside from the King Starscream thing, this plan was going great. He popped the door to the servants’ passageway open, met Yellowjacket’s optics across the room, and waited to get a shallow nod of acknowledgement. They burst into motion simultaneously, Yellowjacket barrelling into Optronix’s side as Optronix parried King Megatron’s next blow with the energy axe mounted in his arm. Rodimus forced himself not to watch, instead skidding to a halt between King Starscream and the fight.

“Your Majesty.” he grabbed the King’s arm, cheeks warming as his optics caught on a set of incredibly conspicuous black paint transfers along the edge of those pristine white wings. “We need to get you to safety.”

“Where did you come from?”

“Over there.” Rodimus jerked his helm to indicate the now open servant’s corridor, where Deadlock waited with an outstretched and beckoning hand. King Starscream looked past him to the down and out brawl as Optronix bellowed in pain and anger, and Rodimus placed a hand flat on the King’s back between his wings to guide him forward. “Deadlock can explain everything.”

Not looking at the source of the battle noises went against every one of Rodimus’s ingrained protocols, but he couldn’t afford to be distracted right now, so he just kept himself between the King and the fight, non-optical sensors focused on it in case anything came flying their way. Yellowjacket and King Megatron were doing their part admirably though, and soon Rodimus was shutting the door behind King Starscream’s wings. Rodimus locked it, activated the buzzsaw he’d managed to coerce back from Deadlock, and spun to throw himself back into the fight.

His spinning blade scored a bright pink line across the small of Optronix’s back, right in the join between his pelvic and dorsal plating. Optronix’s elbow jerked back to slam into his helm just between his optics, and his sensory feeds fritzed as he staggered back. He went down in an ungraceful heap when his heel hit the bottom of one of the steps leading up to the thrones, buzzsaw deactivating as he reached up to cradle his helm. _Ow_.

“Rodimus, his heels!” Yellowjacket yelled, and his visual feed was still mostly static but Rodimus could see well enough to do what was being asked of him. He rose up onto all fours, activated his buzzsaw again, and lashed out. There wasn’t half as much resistance as he expected, but the roar of pain from Optronix was unmistakable. The stumble even moreso, and Rodimus braced himself as King Megatron drove Optronix backwards to trip over his mostly prone frame.

Optronix went down like a ton of scrap, and King Megatron wasted no time in stepping clean over Rodimus to drive his sword deep in Optronix’s chest. Rodimus scrambled to his pedes, accepting the hand Yellowjacket offered without bothering to make sure it wouldn’t electrocute him, and once he was upright Yellowjacket gripped his arm tighter than was strictly professional. Rodimus returned the hold, fuel pump thundering in his chest as the room seemed to hang in silence, King Megatron leaning on the hilt of his fuel-pinked sword and keeping it in place through Optronix’s spark.

“I hope- you find peace, in the Well.” King Megatron said softly, vocaliser fritzing and vents blasting. Optronix laughed in response, and Rodimus went taut as a bridge cable at the sound. That sound never meant anything good.

“I’m not going there.” he rasped, and then his helm fell sideways until those dimming Pit-ember optics landed on Rodimus and Yellowjacket. They crinkled up at the edges, and Rodimus’s spark seized in his chest as Optronix forced out one last sentence through a vocaliser that was rapidly losing power. “Proud- of you.” his words hung in the air for a nano-klik undisturbed, then there was the soft sound of a helm dropping to the floor as the last light faded from his optics.

Rodimus’s knees suddenly felt very weak, his tank like it was in danger of purging its contents on the polished floor, and his helm spun dizzyingly. Yellowjacket slumped against his side, and Rodimus leaned into the pressure for stability.

What now?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don’t tell me starscream and megatron wouldn’t frag on their thrones, they _absolutely_ would. It’s their house, after all.


	17. Chapter 17

Deadlock pulled his carrier into the narrow corridor, nose wrinkling at the smell of interface clinging to his carrier’s armour. Hearing his creators fragging had been bad enough, this was just _weird_.

“Why are you here?” Carrier hissed, wings swept back and tense as Deadlock guided him through the narrow hallway.

“Long story.” he said, and Carrier’s engine growled. “Uh, Overlord will explain it, I promise.”

“So he’s involved too?”

“Yes?” Deadlock hedged, glancing behind him to see the scowl on his carrier’s face. Well, getting grounded for a stellar cycle was better than having two dead creators, so if that was the trade-off he’d happily take it. Overlord was gonna get back at him for foisting off the duty of explaining it to Carrier, though, and _that_ he wasn’t looking forward to.

“And here I thought the two of you hadn’t a devious strut in your frames.” Carrier teased, and Deadlock relaxed slightly. “You’re still both grounded, though. Your sire and I will discuss details later.”

Yeah, he’d kinda figured.

The corridor’s next exit was in the banquet hall, and as soon as Overlord and the castle guards the two of them had cleared out of Optronix’s way had Carrier safe and secure Deadlock slipped out of the room. The castle hadn’t felt so large since he was a mechling small enough to hide under chairs, the halls cavernous and never-ending as he sprinted through them. It felt like an age before he reached the throne room, and he skidded through the door just in time to see Sire’s ceremonial sword plunge through Optronix’s chest.

He froze where he stood, optics wide, the sharp pink of Optronix’s energon on the stairs of the throne dias branding itself into his processor. It was one thing to have Rodimus and Yellowjacket insist Optronix be killed, and wholly another to see the mech’s innermost energon thick on the floor of his home.

“Proud- of you.” a deep voice rasped, and Deadlock cancelled a purge request from his fuel tank, swallowing hard. That must’ve been Optronix speaking. Optronix who was looking right at Rodimus, who had raised Deadlock’s guard in lieu of any actual caretaker figure, whose sub-glyphs denoted not relation to the addressed but _possession_. Rodimus slumped sideways, and as Deadlock approached quietly he realized Yellowjacket was there as well, leaning heavily on Rodimus, the two of them holding each other up.

Sire’s sword was still embedded in Optronix’s chest, his plating splashed with fuel not his own in addition to the bright pink that seeped from gouges in his armour. He was swaying slightly on his pedes, venting hard, and Deadlock glanced at the pair of guards once more before moving to his sire’s side. He’d let Rodimus and Yellowjacket have their moment. “Sire, are you alright?” he asked, catching his sire by the elbow and bracing himself to act as a steadying prop for the larger mech.

“I will be.” Sire growled, optics fixed on Optronix and filled with a cold fury. “You knew.”

Oh, scrap. Maybe he should’ve been the one to explain it to Carrier after all, Sire was going to be _pissed_. “Yes.” he said, wishing Overlord would come striding in and draw Sire’s attention long enough for him to grab Rodimus and get out of here. Leave the scolding for morning.

“Why was I not informed?”

Deadlock grimaced. “Overlord and I were going to tell Soundwave, but he would’ve called our plan too risky.”

“Plan?” Sire’s icy glare shifted from the slowly greying frame on the stairs to meet Deadlock’s optics. “Your _plan_ was to let a murderer into our home, let him threaten your carrier and siblings-”

“How were we supposed to know Carrier would be here?” he protested, cutting his sire off. “We kept him from slaughtering the guards on the way in, and Rodimus and Yellowjacket assured us they could handle him with your help.”

“And why not involve the guards as well?” Sire rumbled, standing up taller. Deadlock rarely felt small around his creators, but right now he felt no more than knee-high.

“We insisted.” Yellowjacket said, drawing Sire’s intense stare. “Rodimus and I, we didn’t want anyone getting hurt.” the little guard pulled himself up as tall as he could, which wasn’t much even when he didn’t have Rodimus leaning on him. “We’ll take full responsibility.”

“You’ll do no such thing.” Overlord said from the doorway, his long legs bringing him across the room in great strides. “All four of us are to blame. Deadlock or I could’ve told Soundwave behind your backs, but we didn’t.”

Sire’s optics scanned over the lot of them, and Deadlock relaxed some when his sire gave a heavy sigh. “It is late, and I am very tired. We’ll discuss your punishment at breakfast.”

Deadlock turned to Rodimus, and his spark soared at the wobbly little smile his guard gave him. It promptly clenched and dropped low in his tank when Rodimus nearly tripped over his own feet trying to step closer, and Deadlock hurried to his guard’s side. He didn’t look particularly hurt, but there was a nasty dent in the back of his helm like he’d whacked it on the dias stairs. “Come on.” he murmured, sliding one of Rodimus’s arms behind one of his shoulders and then between his helm and shoulder kibble on the other side, locking his hand around his guard’s wrist to keep it there. “Let’s get you to berth.”

“I gotta-” Rodimus tried to protest as Deadlock led him out into the hallway, staunchly ignoring the curious looks he got from a pair of passing guards

“Consider yourself lucky I’m not dragging your aft to the infirmary.” Deadlock huffed, sliding his free arm around the small of Rodimus’s back to better guide him around a corner.

“This isn’t the way to my habsuite.” Rodimus noticed a few turns and a flight of stairs later. He’d definitely hit his helm.

“You’re recharging in my berth tonight.” Deadlock informed him, and the fuzz of Rodimus’s exhausted field against his abruptly vanished, furling in so tight to Rodimus’s clamped down armour he could barely feel it even pressed up against Rodimus’s side. “No arguing, either.” he preempted sternly. “You’re concussed, someone’s got to keep an optic on you.”

“I didn’t hit my helm _that_ hard.” Rodimus grumbled, and Deadlock rolled his optics. Not bad enough to need observation, but bad enough to think Deadlock wouldn’t take him to the infirmary if he did. Knock Out wasn’t gonna be happy with him when he dragged Rodimus in tomorrow.

“Do it for me?” he asked, and Rodimus’s face pinched like he was trying to think of how to say no.

“I shouldn’t, Your Highness. I’m your guard, not-”

“Shush.” Deadlock released Rodimus’s arm across his shoulders to press a finger to his lips. “Tonight, you get to not be my guard. Tonight you’re just my friend, who just got in a big fight and took a hit to the helm.”

Deadlock released Rodimus to unlock his door, and shivered a little when Rodimus stepped away. “Still, I shouldn’t...”

“Please, Roddy?” Deadlock turned to face him, reaching out imploringly with his field. “For our friendship?”

He couldn’t help smiling as Rodimus buckled, and when his door opened he pulled Rodimus in by the hand. His berth was more than big enough for the two of them, and after the door shut he released Rodimus’s hand to go pull back the insulation tarps. With Rodimus even vaguely nearby, he wouldn’t need them.

“What if I don’t want to be friends?”

“Hmm?” Deadlock looked over at Rodimus, who’d not moved from where Deadlock released him.

“What if...” Rodimus took a few steps forward, field reaching out to brush Deadlock’s, brittle fear and fluttering hope lending context to his bare glyphs. “I don’t want to be friends?”

“I’ll answer that once you get on the berth.” he leaned back to pat the other side, and Rodimus sighed but did come around to sit on the other edge of the berth.

“Alright, I’m on it.”

“Lie down.” Deadlock ordered, and it spoke volumes how willingly Rodimus obeyed. He’d have to think on that sometime. Once Rodimus was curled up comfortably on his side, Deadlock laid down as well and scooted close, until the heat radiating from Rodimus’s frame was enough to warm him all the way through. “Do you want to be friends with me, Roddy?” he asked, and wide red optics stared at him in confusion as Rodimus’s vents audibly stalled. “Or...” Deadlock laid a hand on Rodimus’s thigh, tracing a transformation seam up to his hip. “Did you want something else?” he shifted closer, fingers dipping into Rodimus’s hip joint as the temperature of the air around them shot up by at least ten degrees.

Rodimus’s lips were warm against his, dry, and it took a full three nano-kliks for him to relax into the chaste kiss. An arm slid over Deadlock’s waist, closing the last little bit of distance between them as Rodimus pulled close, and Deadlock broke the kiss when Rodimus tried to deepen it. Rodimus made a soft sound of annoyance as he wiggled closer, slotting their kibble together to lean after Deadlock for another kiss.

“Roddy.” Deadlock chuckled, bumping his forehelm against Rodimus’s and watching those vibrant red optics slide open to meet his. “I would be honoured to court you, but it’s late. We can talk about it in the morning.”

“We could kiss more now, though.” Rodimus suggested with an honest-to-primus pout. Frag, Deadlock was gonna survive an assassination attempt only to be killed by cuteness.

“Roddy, I’m tired.” Deadlock pulled away only just enough to disentangle their chest kibble enough he could lay down properly. “We have plenty of time to kiss later.”

“I guess.” Rodimus snuggled up next to him, field warm with _comfort affection trust_ where it meshed loosely with Deadlock’s at the edges. It took a klik or two to find a comfortable position for both their legs, and just as Deadlock was finally drifting off to recharge Rodimus’s field pulled away from his.

“Wha’s wrong?” he mumbled, bringing his optics back online and frowning at Rodimus.

“Nothing.” Rodimus lied, and Deadlock huffed. Rodimus’s shoulder was warm when he nuzzled against it, smelling of cheap polish and hot metal with the faintest tang of spilt energon.

“Wanna talk about it?” he asked, and after a klick Rodimus’s field brushed his again, hesitantly this time. Like he was ashamed of the mess of feelings swirling through it.

Rodimus opened his mouth, and nothing came out. A few more tires, a few soft bursts of static, and finally Rodimus reset his vocaliser, wrapping both arms around Deadlock and holding him tight, helm pressed against the side of his shoulder kibble in such a way Deadlock couldn’t see his face. “Optronix is dead.” Rodimus whispered, field surging with _grief guilt pain_. “He took me in off the streets, he raised me, and I-” his vocaliser fritzed, a little burst of static accompanying the rapid in-vent to try to cool his heating systems.

“I thought I’d be happy he was dead.” Rodimus’s arms tightened around him, the mech pressing closer like he would’ve crawled inside Deadlock’s frame if he could. “He wanted to kill you. He was a bastard who hurt people for fun, Cybertron’s a better place without him, I should be happy he’s gone.”

Deadlock’s spark ached in sympathy, and he did his best to return Rodimus’s embrace.

“So why does it _hurt_?” Rodimus’s voice cracked, and Deadlock felt the hot tears on his armour without having to see Rodimus’s face. He returned the hug, squeezing Rodimus as tight as he could given their positions.

“Because he was your sire.” he said softly, nuzzling against the nearest piece of Rodimus’s plating. “He wasn’t a _good_ sire, but that doesn’t matter to your emotional and imprinting protocols.”

“I hated him.” Rodimus said, like he was confessing some deep dark sin. “I wanted to kill him since I was old enough to take real jobs. _I don’t want him back_.” he pulled away enough for Deadlock to meet his optics, to see on Rodimus’s face the panicked honesty so evident in his field.

“Good.” he spat, a little surprised by just how vitriolic his sub-glyphs came out. Rodimus blinked, then giggled, and Deadlock cracked a smile as he began to laugh. “I’m here for you, Roddy.” he promised, scooting in close again as Rodimus’s vents began to strain and stutter, more coolant and cleanser welling up in his optics. “No matter how long it takes, things will be okay. _We_’ll be okay.”

A staticky sob came from Rodimus’s mouth, sounding rather like it had been ripped from his vocaliser, and Deadlock gathered Rodimus close, kissing his face and the edges of his helm. He wrapped his field around Rodimus, filling it with _comfort understanding affection_, and held the mech as he cried. It took most of a cycle for Rodimus to exhaust himself, and only once Rodimus was soundly in recharge did Deadlock permit himself to follow. Tomorrow there would be discussions to be had, punishments to be accepted, consequences to be dealt with. Tonight, he had Rodimus in his arms.

Tonight, that was enough.


End file.
